“My novel, which I had started with such hope shortly after publishing my first book of stories, wouldn't budge past the 75-page mark. Nothing I wrote past page 75 made any kind of sense. Nothing. W...”

“If you, like, consciously think about being cool, you're not cool. If you consciously think about being, like, different or original, you ain't different or original.”

“Colleagues are a wonderful thing - but mentors, that's where the real work gets done.”

“The Caribbean is such an apocalyptic place, whether it's the decimation of the indigenous populations by the Europeans, whether it's the importation of slaves and their subsequent being worked to d...”

“I feel most like myself... after I run - I go out for five miles every morning.”

“Students teach all sorts of things but most importantly they make explicit the courage that it takes to be a learner, the courage it takes to open yourself to the transformative power of real learn...”

“Im a dot in the grand scheme of things. I dont matter, not even to the other dots.”

“Music is a writer's heartbeat.”

“Gratitude is the gateway to a positive life.”

“Semua orang pernah patah hati. All you have to do is move on.”

“A novel is never anything but a philosophy expressed in images. And in a good novel the philosophy has disappeared into the images.”

“If you only write when youre inspired you may be a fairly decent poet, but youll never be a novelist because youre going to have to make your word count today and those words arent going to wait fo...”

“A short story must have a single mood and every sentence must build towards it.”

“Write a short story every week. It's not possible to write 52 bad short stories in a row.”

“My short stories are like soft shadows I have set out in the world, faint footprints I have left. I remember exactly where I set down each and every one of them, and how I felt when I did. Short st...”