“Why else do we write and write except to move our readers?”

“Write every day. Don't ever stop. If you are unpublished, enjoy the act of writing—and if you are published, keep enjoying the act of writing. Don't become self-satisfied, don't stop moving ahead, growing, making it new. The stakes are high. Why else would we write?”

“When you sit down to write, write. Don't do anything else except go to the bathroom, and only do that if it absolutely cannot be put off.”

“I do not know what you are supposed to do with memories likes these. It feels wrong to want to forget. Perhaps this is why we write these things down, so we can move on.”

“If Readers have prejudices, that's the writing world we live in. We must decide how to navigate it. We can't please all the Readers all the time and we shouldn't try. but we don't get to create our Readers in our own image, either. We don't get to tell them what to value or enjoy. We can write in a way true to our own voice and our own ideas of beauty and substance, and we can hope that some readers appreciate it. But, even when we aim to serve the narrowest cross section of Readers, we're still working for the Readers we have. We should be grateful that we have them.”

“(About beginning to write after moving from New York to Texas...) Honestly, there wasn't much else to do there.”