“It's difficult to stop trying with the one you love. You always hope that this next time might work, might change everything for the better.”

“The job is what you do when you are told what to do. The job is showing up at the factory, following instructions, meeting spec, and being managed.Someone can always do your job a little better or faster or cheaper than you can.The job might be difficult, it might require skill, but it's a job.Your art is what you do when no one can tell you exactly how to do it. Your art is the act of taking personal responsibility, challenging the status quo, and changing people.I call the process of doing your art 'the work.' It's possible to have a job and do the work, too. In fact, that's how you become a linchpin.The job is not the work.”

“But perhaps the real reason we keep writing is the hope naïve perhaps that we’ll make a better job of it next time. Unless you’re a genius or a fool you realize that everything you write however “successful ” is always a sort of failure. And so you try again.”

“Love doesn't work that way. You don't meet one day and kiss and see sparkles the next. Real love takes time. They need to get to know each other, and when they do, then they might fall in love. They know next to nothing about each other now.”

“Try as I might, I couldn't destroy my spirit. And try as I might, I couldn't change who I was. I was left with what to me seemed to be the most difficult option: loving myself just the way I am.”

“...the next time you need a piece of apparently obscure information, try asking a science fiction writer. You might be surprised.”