“Because life, no matter what it is like, must be lived, and because to live is not merely to survive; it is to laugh, to think, to write.”

“I always laugh at the term 'Cinderella story', because, if you ask me, it doesn't matter what life you're living, life never has a solution. No matter how hard the struggles are that you leave behind, new struggles always take their place.”

“I want to write because I have the urge to excel in one medium of translation and expression of life. I can't be satisfied with the colossal job of merely living. Oh, no, I must order life in sonnets and sestinas and provide a verbal reflector for my 60-watt lighted head.”

“I write because the lives of all of us are stories. If enough of those stories are told, then perhaps we will begin to see that our lives are the same story. The differences are merely in the details.”

“We write from life and call it literature, and literature lives because we are in it.”

“I tell aspiring writers that you have to find what you MUST write. When you find it, you will know, because the subject matter won’t let you go. It’s not enough to write simply because you think it would be neat to be published. You have to be compelled to write. If you’re not, nothing else that you do matters.”