“Pleasure, I remind myself, is inseparable from its lawfully wedded mate, pain.”

“Writing is a habit, an addiction, as powerful and overmastering an urge as putting a bottle to your lips or a spike in your arm. Call it the impulse to make something out of nothing, call it an obs...”

“I've always been a quitter. I quit the Boy Scouts, the glee club, the marching band. Gave up my paper route, turned my back on the church, stuffed the basketball team. I dropped out of college, sid...”

“But then, thats the beauty of writing storieseach one is an exploratory journey in search of a reason and a shape. And when you find that reason and that shape, theres no feeling like it.", 3:AM Ma...”

“First you have nothing, and then, astonishingly, after ripping out your brain and your heart and betraying your friends and ex-lovers and dreaming like a zombie over the page till you can't see or ...”

“In order to create you have to believe in your ability to do so and that often means excluding whole chunks of normal life, and, of course, pumping yourself up as much as possible as a way of keepi...”

“Our lives go by in our own minds. The war is inside our heads and only we can return the peace. It is essential to remember that in one sense we are always right. If we say, we can, we can. If we s...”

“Try for once to justify the meaning of your existence as it were a posteriori by setting yourself an aim, a goal... an exalted and noble 'to this end.' Perish in pursuit of this and only this”

“Music was like food, like water, like air - that necessary, that essential - and here she was in a break-on-through mood and nothing for it but her own stumbling version caught like lint on her ton...”

“Its hard to stay up. Its been a long long dayAnd you've got the sandman at your door. But hang on, leave the TV on and lets do it anyway.Its ok. You can always sleep through work tomorrow. Ok?Hey, ...”

“The waters of the stream played the part of the orchestra, and the sunlight provided the dancers. Every now and then a crescendo of wind highlighted the symphony in the clearing by the creek.”

“Dont get stressed over the little things and make sure you live life to the fullest.”