A writer is a person who cares what words mean, what they say, how they say it. Writers know words are their way towards truth and freedom, and so they use them with care, with thought, with fear, with delight. By using words well they strengthen their souls. Story-tellers and poets spend their lives learning that skill and art of using words well. And their words make the souls of their readers stronger, brighter, deeper.

To oppose something is to maintain it... You must go somewhere else; you must have another goal; then you walk a different road.

Any artist must expect to work amid the total, rational indifference of everybody else to their work, for years, perhaps for life.

When I'm writing I don't dream much; it's like the dreaming gets used in the writing.

...If at moments the facts seem to alter with an altered voice, why then you can choose the fact you like best; yet none of them are false, and it is all one story.

To learn which questions are unanswerable, and not to answer them: this skill is most needful in times of stress and darkness.

Art is action. The way I live my life to its highest degree is by writing, the practice of art.