The song we’re composing already exists in potential. Our work is to find it.

If you find yourself asking yourself (and your friends), "Am I really a writer? Am I really an artist?" chances are you are. The counterfeit innovator is wildly self-confident. The real one is scared to death.

The professional learns to recognize envy-driven criticism and to take it for what it is: the supreme compliment. The critic hates most that which he would have done himself if he had had the guts.

You are a writer when you tell yourself you are. No one else's opinion matters. Screw them. You are when you say you are.

Picasso painted with passion, Mozart composed with it. A child plays with it all day long. You may think you’ve lost your passion, or that you can’t identify it, or that you have so much of it, it threatens to overwhelm you. None of these is true.

Fear doesn't go away. The battle must be fought anew every day.

When you're a working writer, sooner or later friends and acquaintances will get you alone and confide that they, too, have a book in them.