When I write, I can shake off all my cares.

For a long time, I had the idea that I would do a certain amount of work the best I could, and then I would reach a comfort zone, and I wouldn’t be pushed to write more. I would become a different person. It’s a surprise to me that this hasn’t happened. Your body ages, but your mind is the same.

A poem is a naked person… Some people say that I am a poet.

Sometimes, reading a blog, which I do infrequently, I see that generations of Americans have been wilfully crippled, and can no longer spell or write a sentence.

If you wish to be a writer, write.

I’m a writer, not a professional runner. It’s fun and it helps me write. I need powerful concentration.

What I have is a malevolent curiosity. That’s what drives my need to write and what probably leads me to look at things a little askew. I do tend to take a different perspective from most people.

You can write a short story in two hours. Two hours a day, you have a novel in a year.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

There is a soak-the-rich attitude in the air, a feeling that if you have a lot of money you must have got it by some ghastly means. I can quite happily say there was never any family money. All the money we got was mine, just from writing books.

Aging can be fun if you lay back and enjoy it.

If you try and work out at 4:30 in the afternoon, how many people are going to chip away at that time? Your boss, your job, your work, your family, your other obligations that you might have. At 4:30 in the morning, all those people are asleep, so you can do whatever you want.

You have to dream intentionally. Most people dream a dream when they are asleep. But to be a writer, you have to dream while you are awake, intentionally.

We begin to see, therefore, the importance of selecting our environment with the greatest of care, because environment is the mental feeding ground out of which the food that goes into our minds is extracted.

Talking is a hydrant in the yard and writing is a faucet upstairs in the house. Opening the first takes the pressure off the second.

Language is the dress of thought.

Better keep yourself clean and bright; you are the window through which you must see the world.

When I feel I’m doing too much, I do less if I can.

An author writes a book, and that’s the book at that point. And if the author writes the book again, then somehow something has gone wrong, if you see what I mean.

If you love something – and there are things that I love – you do want more and more and more of it, but that’s not the way to produce good work. So as an author, I need to write what I need to write.

The ear is the only true writer and the only true reader.

Wherever you write is supposed to be a little bit of a refuge, a place where you can get away from the world. The more closed in you are, the more you’re forced back on your own imagination.

In Hollywood the woods are full of people that learned to write but evidently can’t read. If they could read their stuff, they’d stop writing.

I seem to turn out stories that violate the discipline of the short story form and don’t obey the rules of progression for novels. I don’t think about a particular form: I think more about fiction, let’s say a chunk of fiction.

When you stop caring what people think, you lose your capacity for connection. When you’re defined by it, you lose our capacity for vulnerability.

I don’t believe in ‚thinking‘ old. Although I’ve transitioned through many bodies – a baby, toddler, child, teen, young adult, mid-life and older adult – my spirit is unchanged. I support my body with exercise, my mind with reading and writing, and my spirit with the knowing that I am part of the Divine source of all life.

If you can speak what you will never hear, if you can write what you will never read, you have done rare things.

He who does not mind his belly, will hardly mind anything else.

I feel like I was writing as I was learning to talk. Writing was always a go-to form of communication. And I knew I could sing from being in tune with the radio.

If you keep on writing for three years, every day, you should be strong. Of course, you have to be strong mentally, also. But in the first place, you have to be strong physically. That is a very important thing. Physically and mentally you have to be strong.

I learned a long time ago the wisest thing I can do is be on my own side, be an advocate for myself and others like me.

This is not writing at all. Indeed, I could say that Shakespeare surpasses literature altogether, if I knew what I meant.

Exercise is really important to me – it’s therapeutic. So if I’m ever feeling tense or stressed or like I’m about to have a meltdown, I’ll put on my iPod and head to the gym or out on a bike ride along Lake Michigan with the girls.

It’s very important that we re-learn the art of resting and relaxing. Not only does it help prevent the onset of many illnesses that develop through chronic tension and worrying; it allows us to clear our minds, focus, and find creative solutions to problems.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole damn life and one is as good as the other.

And as a writer, one of the things that I’ve always been interested in doing is actually invading your comfort space. Because that’s what we’re supposed to do. Get under your skin, and make you react.

It’s hard to practice compassion when we’re struggling with our authenticity or when our own worthiness is off-balance.

If I waited for perfection… I would never write a word.

When I say that basically writing is a hard hustle, I don’t mean that it is a bad life, if one can get away with it. It’s the miracle of miracles to make a living by the typer.

I used to write random little stupid things when I was five, but then the first song I really wrote was one called ‚Fingers Crossed,‘ which is on SoundCloud.

So many writers don’t like to write… I like to write, and sometimes I’m afraid I like it too much, because when I get into work, I don’t want to leave it. And as a result, I’ll go for days and days and days without leaving my house.

I like to let things breathe.

Historian: an unsuccessful novelist.

‚Two Voices,‘ from my album with Peter Schwalm, is an intact dream-poem. I awoke one night with an image of a piece of paper and all the words of the poem written on it, so I just blundered down to the kitchen table and ‚copied it out.‘

Writing and cafes are strongly linked in my brain.

If you’re nice to me I’ll never write anything bad about you.

The difference between the almost right word and the right word is really a large matter – ‚tis the difference between the lightning-bug and the lightning.

A good writer possesses not only his own spirit but also the spirit of his friends.

Your manuscript is both good and original; but the part that is good is not original, and the part that is original is not good.

I look at myself like a show dog. I’ve got to keep her clipped and trimmed and in good shape.

Writing and travel broaden your ass if not your mind and I like to write standing up.

You need a certain amount of nerve to be a writer.

Many of us have been running all our lives. Practice stopping.

I can remember being home from school with tonsillitis and writing stories in bed to pass the time.

Nobody can write the life of a man but those who have eat and drunk and lived in social intercourse with him.

After you finish a book, you know, you’re dead. But no one knows you’re dead. All they see is the irresponsibility that comes in after the terrible responsibility of writing.

Excessive literary production is a social offense.

I am alone a lot, which is good. I need that time to just be alone after a long day, just decompress. So, I go to either my house or the hotel, or my apartment, or whatever – wherever I am, I go home and I watch TV and I sit there, with my cat, and I just watch TV or go online, check my emails.

I have never given adoration to any body except myself.

I think sometimes the best training is to rest.

I do sometimes look back at things I’ve written in the past, and think, ‚I just don’t remember being the person who wrote that.‘