“Putting pen to paper lights more fire than matches ever will”

“To set a forest on fire, you light a match. To set a character on fire, you put him in conflict.”

“Poetry [is] more necessary than ever as a fire to light our tongues.”

“I have always had more dread of a pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper than of a sword or pistol.”

“Nervously, I light a cigarette and chase through the smoke for the wounds that years have seared my soul, words whose fire has never been quenched by ink. Is paper a dustbin for the memory, a place where we always deposit the ash of the last cigarette of nostalgia, the remnants of the final disappointment? Which one of us lights up or stubs the other? I really do not know. Before you, I never wrote anything worth mentioning. Because of you, I put pen to paper.”

“Any girl who says she doesn’t keep a list of best kisses ever is lying. She may not have a pen-and-paper list, but she knows in her head who rocked her world and made her more than weak in the knees.”