“Believe in yourself and start achieving your dream. It waits for you on the other side of the publish button.”

“Honesty makes stories real and characters memorable. From there, taking them to where they need to go will be all the development they need.”

“Pound it out, get it done, write every day. No excuses. Kerouac said you cant wait for inspiration, you have to go after it with a club. Damn straight. Youll sleep a lot better getting your word co...”

“You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you cant play it safe.”

“Kids are flat-out freaking hilarious if you are paying attention. Not just my kid, but every kid.”

“I wasnt a class clown, because my parents were very strict and because nuns in general have no sense of humor. I mean zero, zip, nada. I wasted some of my best stuff on those old hags! Look at thes...”

“When we are no longer able to change a situation, we are challenged to change ourselves.”

“But one of the worst results of being a slave and being forced to do things is that when there is no one to force you any more you find you have almost lost the power of forcing yourself.”

“The road to success is always under construction”

“The first thing you have to learn when you go into the arts is to learn to cope with rejection. If you cant, youre dead”

“When I am grown up I shall carry a notebooka fat book with many pages, methodically lettered. I shall enter my phrases.”

“Love the work: the grind, the dreaming, the distracted not-sleep, all of it. Its the one thing in the job that will always be there, and the real pleasure in the profession. Everything else is luck.”