Being a professional writer is not an easy way to make a living.

The hardest thing was learning to write. I was 13, and the only writing I had done was for Social Studies. It consisted of copying passages right out of the encyclopedia

Writing is revision. All prose responds to work.

Don't worry about being worried. You're heading out on an adventure and you can always change your mind along the way and try something else.

You do the right thing even if it makes you feel bad. The purpose of life is not to be happy but to be worthy of happiness.

among a coward's weapons, cynicism is the nastiest of all

The combination of domesticity and wildness - that's a deep expression

Things were here before you and will be here after you're gone. The geographic features, especially, give you a sense of your own place in the world and in time

I know that to write you have to have stories you want to tell. You have to keep your mind alive, and you have to work hard.

Public education rests precariously on the skill and virtue of the people at the bottom of the institutional pyramid.

In order to go on with our lives, we are always capable of making the ominous into the merely strange.

Creation pulls something from an abyss of nothing. Startups take the something & give it to those in the dark, at first, perhaps, for nothing.

Sometimes being successful means pissing people off

I'm getting housemaid's knee kneeling here gulping beauty.

I'd like to play bass like Bootsy Collins. I'm serious. That would be my dream.

Nothing is so musical as the sound of pouring bourbon for the first drink on a Sunday morning. Not Bach or Schubert or any of those masters.

Teachers affect eternity. There is no telling where their influence stops.

I feel that I am entitled to my share of lightheartedness and there is nothing wrong with enjoying one's self simply, like a boy.

Celebrities, even insignificant ones like me, are created to be abused by the Great Unwashed.

A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.

When someone comes to you with big dreams, don't be too quick to belittle their ambition and dreams. Inspire and help them in any way you can. Even the beautiful butterfly was once a caterpillar.