“Writing's funny, it's like walking down a hall in the dark looking for the light switch, and suddenly you find it, flip it on, and then you discover the hallway you passed through is papered with the novel you've written.”

“I thought that it was possible at a time like that to cry. There was a switch inside somewhere, and a person could just decide to flip it and start crying. Maybe it looked and felt like the toggle switch on the engine. Silver and smooth. One direction was on; the other direction was off. Easy to flip. You do it without looking. Up -- you’re happy and strong. Down – you’re crying and weak.”

“Before getting to the the light, you must pass through a deep darkness.”

“If you dwell in the darkness, you can see in the dark and look into the light. But in choosing the darkness, you know you are destined to walk alone.”

“When you're walking through the darkness, you can't depend on anything or anyone else to light your way. You have to rely on whatever sparks you've got inside you. Or you're going to get lost.”

“If you were not cast into the abyss, you would have never groped, reached as far as you could reach, to grasp for anything that you could possibly touch, anything that you could possibly feel brushing against your fingertips! Funny how in the darkness, we come to find the things that we never saw before all the lights departed! It's like someone needed to turn the lights out, to make us find all the things that we never looked for when the lights were on! And it's in that blackness that we wake up to the true light! My friends, curse not the darkness! It has given you many things!”