Wisdom is nothing more than the marriage of intelligence and compassion. And, as with all good unions, it takes much experience and time to reach its widest potential. Have you introduced your intellect to your compassion yet? Be careful; lately, intellect has taken to eating in front of the TV and compassion has taken in too many cats.

The only way to help your unique literary voice grow and eventually sing like a glorious creature of wonder is to write what you excites you into a creative passion and brings you pure unadulterated joy.

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air. It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.

Short stories are like individual jewel stones on a necklace, wonderful in themselves like standalone gleaming entities of semantic intensity.

And it is a quiet terrible thing, too, to discover the value of love this way [after loss] - when the object of love is no longer there, when love dies or goes away or changes. When it is too late.

In the desert, the only god is a well.

Worry is the secret weapon perpetrated upon us by the dark forces of the world that lurk in the shape of fear, uncertainty, confusion, and loss. We, on the other hand, have our own secret weapon against these incorporeal fiends. It is laughter.