An owl sound wandered along the road with me. I didn't hear it--I breathed it into my ears.

A writer is not so much someone who has something to say as he is someone who has found a process that will bring about new things he would not have thought of if he had not started to say them.

A student brings something to discuss, saying, "I don't know whether this is really good, or whether I should throw it in the wastebasket." The assumption is that one or the other choice is the right move. No. Almost everything we say or think or do - or write - comes in that spacious human area bounded by something this side of the sublime and something above the unforgivable.

You can treat experience as a set of surprises on which to exercise your quirky self.

You shouldn't have standards that inhibit you from writing It really doesn't make any difference if you are good or bad today. The assessment of the product is something that happens after you've done it.

You don't need many words if you already know what you're talking about

And the things you know before you hear them; these are you and the reason you are in the world.