“Education is about finding out what form of work for you is close to being play—work you do so easily that it restores you as you go.”

“Do you feel you are doing something important or that you care about deeply? Do the content and challenges associated with your work enthrall you? Do you often find yourself surprised by how much time has flown by when you are working? Do you feel passionate about your work? If you have answered yes to one or more of these questions, you are in the fortunate position of being fully engaged by your work.”

“If you don’t put 99 percent of yourself into the writing, there will be no publishing career. There’s the writer and there’s the author. The author—you don’t ever think about the author. Just think about the writer. So my advice would be, find a way to not care—easier said than done. Accept that the world may never notice this thing you worked so hard at. And instead, do it for it, find a job, find a way of living that gives you an hour or two or three a day to do it, and then work your ass off sending out, trying to get out there, but do not put the pressure on the work to do something for you. Because then you’re going to be writing dishonestly and for the market instead of for the characters and your story.”

“You know what you like. You know what you want. So all you have to do is find some work related to that stuff.”

“Out here, you find out that the city fools you about how things really work.”

“Life is about finding . . .what works best for you.”