“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.”

“I take the rawest, realest moments in anyones life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenagers first sexual encounter, the heartbrea...”

“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...”

“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...”

“Those who follow the flock, eat the shit, not the grass.”

“There is a difference between WISHING for a thing and being READY to receive it. No one is ready for a thing, until he believes he can acquire it. The state of mind must be BELIEF, not mere hope or...”

“Never prove people right. Never prove them wrong. Prove instead that you make your own path in life.”

“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.”