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

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.

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.

Time is now. Live a fuller life.

I have to have a character worth caring about. I tend not to start writing books about people I don't have a lot of sympathy for because I'm just going to be with them too long.

Don't talk to me about other worlds, separate realities, lost continents or invisible realms -- I know where I belong. Heaven is home. Utopia is here. Nirvana is now.

Algae is the perfect food plant. It doubles cell mass every twelve hours, depending on the strain.

Indecency in anything spoils it. And modesty in anything adorns it.

The world will end before there is another .400 hitter. . . . I think that was mentioned in the Bible.

There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else.

A holy God is both just and merciful. He is never unjust.

I don't see it as a form of healing, because if you have wounds that are bleeding I don't think acting will ever get them to stop. But I find acting is a form of illumination.

I know it's very 'old media' of me to admit this, but I am often unnerved by the lack of civility on the Web.