Eloquence invites us to bring some part of ourselves to the transaction.

Writers are the custodians of memory, and that's what this chapter is about: how to leave some kind of record of your life and of the family you were born into.

Rewriting is the essence of writing well: it's where the game is won or lost. The idea is hard to accept. We all have emotional equity in our first draft; we can't believe that it wasn't born perfect. But the odds are close to 100 percent that it wasn't.

If writing seems hard, it's because it is hard. It's one of the hardest things people do.

Avoid the ecstatic adjectives that occupy such disproportionate space in every critic's quiver - words like "enthralling" and "luminous."

There are all kinds of writers and all kinds of methods, and any method that helps you to say what you want to say is the right method for you.

The writers job is like solving a puzzle, and finally arriving at a solution is a tremendous satisfaction.