“The entire point of life is to find ways to get others to do your work for you. Don’t you know anything about basic economics?”

“Remember, if you don’t do anything – if you don’t change the way your mind works and direct your subconscious mind to create the life you want – then everything stays the same, nothing changes.”

“She paused and seemed on the verge of getting emotional. "The hard part was that none of my early jobs taught my girls anything about work other than the fact that you have to do it. Now my girls see that if you don't give up on what you really want, work doesn't have to just be drudgery. You really can find something you love, and all of a sudden your life isn't just about finding a way to get to the weekend. You can love the work week just as much.”

“Your life is your own. You mold it. You make it. All anyone can do is to point out ways and means which have been helpful to others. Perhaps they will serve as suggestions to stimulate your own thinking until you know what it is that will fulfill you, will help you to find out what you want to do with your life.”

“If you don’t put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There’s the writer and there’s the author. The author—you don’t ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care—easier said than done. Accept that the world may never notice this thing you worked so hard at. And instead, do it for it, find a job, find a way of living that gives you an hour or two or three a day to do it, and then work your ass off sending out, trying to get out there, but do not put the pressure on the work to do something for you. Because then you’re going to be writing dishonestly and for the market instead of for the characters and your story.”

“You don’t have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don’t have to explain what you plan to do with your life. You don’t have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don’t have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history or economics or science or the arts.You have to pay your electric bill. You have to be kind. You have to give it all you got. You have to find people who love you truly and love them back with the same truth. But that’s all.”