To make a thief, make an owner; to create crime, create laws.

To read and to write. Some writers have to be told to write. They think their job is to meet agents and have experiences and they can just be rich and famous. Their job is to write. Some really don't realize that. And you can't write unless you read.

When you light a candle, you also cast a shadow.

He knew now, and the knowledge was hard, that his task had never been to undo what he had done, but to finish what he had begun.

Readers, after all, are making the world with you. You give them the materials, but it's the readers who build that world in their own minds.

But now his dry and silent grieving for his lost wife must end, for there she stood, the fierce, recalcitrant, and fragile stranger, forever to be won again.

If you have to find devices to coax yourself to stay focused on writing, perhaps you should not be writing what you're writing. And if this lack of motivation is a constant problem, perhaps writing is not your forte. I mean, what is the problem? If writing bores you, that is pretty fatal. If that is not the case, but you find that it is hard going and it just doesn't flow, well, what did you expect? It is work; art is work.