“Pain is easy to write. In pain we're all happily individual. But what can one write about happiness?”

“...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.”

“When you can bring yourself to write about it one day, you will find it all less painful. It is a catharsis of sorts, but the process can be brutal. Don’t do it until you’re ready.”

“Writing consist of everything. whether your writing is of riddles, rimes, prose, trivial, general, of thought, or of feeling. indiscretions you've done or have fantasized about. love, deception, romance, fear, death, life, pain, & yes even happiness. writing is of a specific purpose & states a meaning within what is written.”

“At last I understood that the way over, or through this dilemma, the unease at writing about 'petty personal problems' was to recognize that nothing is personal, in the sense that it is uniquely one's own. Writing about oneself, one is writing about others, since your problems, pains, pleasures, emotions—and your extraordinary and remarkable ideas—can't be yours alone. [...] Growing up is after all only the understanding that one's unique and incredible experience is what everyone shares.”

“...we're constantly waking up to what we're about, what we're really doing in our lives. And the fact is, that's painful. But there's no possibility of freedom without this pain.”