Poetry has never been a favorite American pastime.

Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency.

Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.

Handwriting is more connected to the movement of the heart.

We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.

I used to think freedom meant doing whatever you want. It means knowing who you are, what you are supposed to be doing on this earth, and then simply doing it.

This is your life. You are responsible for it. You will not live forever. Don't wait.

Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.

It is odd that we never question the feasibility of a football team practicing long hours for one game; yet in writing we rarely give ourselves the space for practice.

Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

Learn to read deeply. It will slowly open your mind’s eye, and will be able to see the secret beauty of the universe and understand its deeper essence.

It is only when one is under extreme duress that one's true character is revealed.

How much violence, Marshal, do you think a man can carry before it breaks him?

Satan's friendship reaches to the prison door.

I didn't really go the starving-artist route. I kind of went and did massive, commercial things.

All I can do is be faithful with my gift, be faithful with anyone I talk to and let love be my guide and just be gracious with people. God will take care of the rest. I really believe that.

In another thirty years people will laugh at anyone who tries to invent a language without closures, just as they'll laugh now at anyone who tries to invent a language without recursion.

From within or from behind, a light shines through us upon things, and makes us aware that we are nothing, but the light is all.

In all things that you do, consider the end.