I think that my responsibility to my art is to try to get it right or to push the boundaries of what I'm able to do in any way.

It's hell writing and it's hell not writing. The only tolerable state is having just written.

Such tenderness, those afternoons and evenings, saying blackberry, blackberry, blackberry.

Take the time to write. You can do your life's work in half an hour a day.

Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

Poetry is a fireplace in summer or a fan in winter.

If you're imaginatively responsible to the place you live in, you understand the watershed.

The birds are silent in the woods. / Just wait: soon enough / You will be quiet too

Imagination runs through the places where we live like water. We need both things-a living knowledge of the land and a live imagination of it and our place in it- if we are going to preserve it.

Repetition makes us feel secure and variation makes us feel free.

Writing is an incessant process of discovery.

I believe there's only one regulation in life that works: failure.

Howard Minsky had gotten the script to her agent prior to my involvement.

Every human interaction offers you the chance to make things better or to make things worse.

Too much information will make your brain choke.

Those activities at which you excel with no effort at all - those are the ones you ought to pursue to the detriment of others.

It's all about humanity, humility, and integrity.

At 20, 25, 30, we begin to realise that the possibilities of escape are getting fewer. We have jobs, children, partners, debts. This is the part of us to which literary fiction speaks.

Communication does not always occur naturally, even among a tight-knit group of individuals. Communication must be taught and practiced in order to bring everyone together as one

I think when you talk about competing against others, the problem is that you refer to something that's been done already and try to beat it.

Without Art, we should have no notion of the sacred; without Science, we should always worship false gods.