“You can, of course, write to inspire others… but most importantly, you must write to inspire yourself.”

“Never downplay the power and importance of imagination. Nothing manifests in your reality without having been imagined first. Every single thing that you eventually come to life has been imagined first.”

“The key to happiness? Find someone who would rather you be happy than themselves and then you treat them the same way. That way, no matter what, you are both trying to insure the OTHER person's happiness and in turn, yours is undeniable.”

“I'm a happy person. If you want to be around me, you can either choose to be happy too, or follow the signs to the nearest exit!”

“Now that his children had grown into their lives, their own children too, there was no one who needed more than the idea of him, and he thought maybe that was why he had this nagging feeling, this sense that there were things he had to know for himself, only for himself. He knew, of course he knew, that a life wasn't anything like one of those novels Jenny read, that it stumbled along, bouncing off one thing, then another, until it just stopped, nothing wrapped up neatly. He remembered his children's distress at different times, failing an exam or losing a race, a girlfriend. Knowing that they couldn't believe him but still trying to tell them that it would pass, that they would be amazed, looking back, to think it had mattered at all. He thought of himself, thought of things that had seemed so important, so full of meaning when he was twenty, or forty, and he thought maybe it was like Jenny's books after all. Red herrings and misdirection, all the characters and observations that seemed so central, so significant while the story was unfolding. But then at the end you realized that the crucial thing was really something else. Something buried in a conversation, a description - you realized that all along it had been a different answer, another person glimpsed but passed over, who was the key to everything. Whatever everything was. And if you went back, as Jenny sometimes did, they were there, the clues you'd missed while you were reading, caught up in the need to move forward. All quietly there.”

“You don't need to wait for inspiration to write. It's easier to be inspired while writing than while not writing...”

“If someone loves you, they should not be envious of you pouring your heart and soul and time and energy into the things that you are passionate about, but instead....they should love you MORE because you are so involved in those things.”