“The only way you can write the truth is to assume that what you set down will never be read. Not by any other person, and not even by yourself at some later date. Otherwise you begin excusing yourself. You must see the writing as emerging like a long scroll of ink from the index finger of your right hand; you must see your left hand erasing it.”

“Freedom begins the moment you realize someone else has been writing your story and it's time you took the pen from his hand and started writing it yourself.”

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

“Take a good look at yourself and know you've got yourself a ways to go. But difficult is not impossible. You can take back all the lost control.Take a good look at yourself and see that you'll emerge eventually-As long as your heart's not too far gone from THE ONLY THING THAT CAN SAVE YOU FROM YOURSELF.”

“Even if, at the moment, you can't sit down and do the gruntwork of stringing verbs and nouns together, you are writing. It is a way of seeing, a way of being. The world is not only the world, but your personal filing cabinet. You lodge details of the world in your sparkling nerve-library that spirals through your brain and coils down your arms and legs, collects in your belly and your sex. You write, even if you can't always "write." However, writers write. Active, not passive.”

“You must write for yourself, above all. That is your only hope of creating something beautiful.”