All freedom comes from discipline.
Laughter is the key that grace has arrived.
Write straight into the emotional center of things. Write toward vulnerability. Don’t worry about appearing sentimental. Worry about being unavailable; worry about being absent or fraudulent.
One line of dialogue that rings true reveals character in a way that pages of description can’t.
Good writing is about telling the truth.
I honestly think that in order to be a writer you have to learn to be reverent. If not, why are you writing? Why are you here?
You are going to love some of your characters because they are you or some facet of you, and you are going to hate some of your characters for the same reason.
The truth is that progress is usually small and sneaky.
Where do we even start on the daily walk of restoration and awakening? We start where we are.
My writer friends, and they are legion, do not go around beaming with quiet feelings of contentment. Most of them go around with haunted, abused, surprised looks on their faces, like lab dogs on whom very personal deodorant sprays have been tested.
A writer paradoxically seeks the truth and tells lies every step of the way.
Tell the truth as you understand it. If you’re a writer, you have a moral obligation to do this. And it is a revolutionary act – truth is always subversive.
I devoured books like a person taking vitamins, afraid that otherwise I would remain this gelatinous narcissist, with no possibility of ever becoming thoughtful, of ever being taken seriously.
I wish there were shortcuts to wisdom and self-knowledge: cuter abysses or three-day spa wilderness experiences. Sadly, it doesn’t work that way. I so resent this.
I was raised by my parents to believe that you had a moral obligation to try and help save the world.
Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.
A whole lot of us believers, of all different religions, are ready to turn back the tide of madness by walking together, in both the dark and the light – in other words, through life – registering voters as we go, and keeping the faith.
Listen to your broccoli and it will tell you how to eat it.
I don’t have very sophisticated taste in music. I listen to a lot of folk music. I like reggae.
All I ever wanted since I arrived here on earth are the same things I needed as a baby, to go from cold to warm, lonely to held, the vessel to the giver, empty to full.