I could spend two years cross-legged on my floor and feel like I was working.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

The world will never know you because you were not bold and did not take a risk

I imagine you come across a number of people who are disconcerted by the difference between what you do feel and what they fancy you ought to feel. It is fatal to pay the smallest attention to them.

It's not about being good. It's about being brave.

...you have changed everything for me- you rearranged the furniture and now you've changed the view from my window!...

Prajñāpāramitā Buddhism is not a religion suitable for the brainless

Never treat your audience as customers, always as partners.

I have never really thought of him as a person, either.... A guy whose strings were broken, who didn’t feel the root of his leaves of grass connected to the field, a guy who was cracked. Like me.

As your awareness of the riches available to you in your everyday life grows, you are on the way to becoming the laughing Buddha. Life is joyous. Life is Light. Life is happy. You are awake at last.

But probably my favorite music, believe it or not, is sad music.

How Do you spell relax?" I whispered, holding his head with my hands. I think the answer is f-u-c-k-m-e." He answered.