“You hold onto what you have; you do not give it up easily, even when you know it is poisoning you.”

“Sometimes we gotta be brave even when we're scared. We gotta not let being scared keep us from thinkin' straight. That's all brave is, boy, when you come right down to it, not lettin' the fear get you so turned around you start doin' stupid things, instead of what you know you ought to do.”

“When you have too much faith in something, it's bound to hurt you. Too much faith in anything will suck you dry. In this way, all the world is a vampire.”

“If you find yourself imitating another writer, that doesn't have to be a bad thing, especially if you are a young or a new writer. However, you should be conscious of exactly how you are imitating him - word choice, sentence structure, motifs? - and think about why you're doing it.”

“+He wasn’t much for erasing anyway. Sometimes your mistakes showed you the really interesting connections between your brain, your hand, and your heart, the ones you might otherwise never know were there. They were important even if you had no idea what they meant.Like now, for instance. Coming back here might be the biggest mistake he’d ever made. But it might also be the most important thing he’d ever done.”

“If you want something, you don't wait for the world to deal it out for you. You take it.”

“I don't think it is possible to give tips for finding one's voice; it's one of those things for which there aren't really any tricks or shortcuts, or even any advice that necessarily translates from writer to writer. All I can tell you is to write as much as possible.”