“You can't write any form of fiction unless you enjoy reading it. You must be sincere in your approach. It's no good despising the form. So many people think they could earn some money from writing something for which they have no affection. It won't work. The first thing you have to have is belief.”

“Some people are very unfulfilled. In consequence they write passionately good romance because they believe that they could still find happiness. Emily Bronte was not a fulfilled woman but the passion she felt went into Wuthering Heights.”

“If you run, you are a runner. It doesn't matter how fast or how far. It doesn't matter if today is your first day or if you've been running for twenty years. There is no test to pass, no license to earn, no membership card to get. You just run.”

“It was being a runner that mattered, not how fast or how far I could run. The joy was in the act of running and in the journey, not in the destination. We have a better chance of seeing where we are when we stop trying to get somewhere else. We can enjoy every moment of movement, as long as where we are is as good as where we'd like to be. That's not to say that you need to be satisfied forever with where you are today. But you need to honor what you've accomplished, rather than thinking of what's left to be done (p. 159).”

“Believe that you can run farther or faster. Believe that you're young enough, old enough, strong enough, and so on to accomplish everything you want to do. Don't let worn-out beliefs stop you from moving beyond yourself.”

“You read and write and sing and experience, thinking that one day these things will build the character you admire to live as. You love and lose and bleed best you can, to the extreme, hoping that one day the world will read you like the poem you want to be.”

“I'm not good with hospitals. The endless buildings, trees dotted around like apologies, and inside, it's job functions you can't understand and that air of incomprehensible busyness. Curtained-off beds and death settling like falling snow.”