“The sweat of hard work is not to be displayed. It is much more graceful to appear favored by the gods.”

“In a time of destruction, create something.”

“Perhaps women were once so dangerous they had to have their feet bound.”

“Ocean people are different from land people. The ocean never stops saying and asking into ears, which dont sleep like eyes. Those who live by the sea examine the driftwood and glass balls that floa...”

“This is the most important thing about me--I'm a card-carrying reader. All I really want to do is sit and read or lie down and read or eat and read or shit and read. I'm a trained reader. I want a ...”

“It must be that people who read go on more macrocosmic and microcosmic trips biblical god trips, the Tibetan Book of the Dead, Ulysses, Finnegans Wake trips. Non-readers, what do they get? (They g...”

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

“To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.”

“Writers know all the good reasons for subjecting their work to a sharp trim. Early drafts are notorious for repetition, indirection and overdevelopment of the trivial.”

“Inspiration comes from your writing. Thoughts meander subliminally through our subconscious, at night when we sleep the brain is working. In the act of writing, phrases come out and you think: wow,...”

“Writing doesnt get any easier with time or talent. If writing is easy for you, youre probably still learning the craft. You havent perfected your style or landed upon your voice. You havent learned...”

“I always worked until I had something done and I always stopped when I knew what was going to happen next. That way I could be sure of going on the next day.”

“To write is to stand at the edge of a bottomless well, unafraid of falling in.”

“But when I say it isn't meant for anyone's eyes, I don't mean it in the sense of one of those novel manuscripts people keep in a drawer, insisting they don't care if anyone else ever reads it or no...”

“So here I am writing my zombie story and my lead character decides to betray me.”