Authors always feel in danger of being abandoned by loved ones. This is a potent fear. Yet it's as inevitable as writer's cramp when we presume to write words for others to read.

Fear is felt by writers at every level. Anxiety accompanies the first word they put on paper and the last.

Anxiety is not only an inevitable part of the writing process but a necessary part. If you’re not scared, you’re not writing.

Serious writers write, inspired or not. Over time they discover that routine is a better friend than inspiration.

Writing can be wonderful therapy, and cheap at the price. At the very least, you eventually get bored by thinking about anxious topics and move on.

I think that simply nudging yourself into unfamiliar settings - physical or emotional - can produce surprising results on the writing front.

Be as creative in your tactics as you are in your writing. Find what gets your engine going, no matter how peculiar it may seem to others.

Willa Cather said that she write best when she stopped trying to write and began simply to remember.

Where Alph, the sacred river, ran Through caverns measureless to man Down to a sunless sea.

It is a special privilege and calling to live in two millenniums.

If lawyers are disbarred and clergymen are defrocked, shouldn't it follow that cowboys would be deranged?

Gags die, humor doesn't.

Harmony with land is like harmony with a friend; you cannot cherish his right hand and chop off his left.

Suspicion on one side breeds suspicion on the other, and new weapons beget counter-weapons.

Shihonage is the foundation of Aikido. All you ever need to master is shihonage.

There is much more to life than what gets measured in accounts. Even economists know that.

There are bands, like R.E.M., who want to have 17 records, and some are terrible and some are great. I don't know if people think like that anymore. Things are more atomized now.