Talent is not rare. What’s rare is the devotion and stamina to keep writing, and the ability to build on the successes that your work already displays.

How we learn is what we learn.

Daily life is always extraordinary when rendered precisely.

Writing teaches writing. Your writing will teach you how to write if you work hard enough and have enough faith.

What is this thing that has us chewing at our own selves, grating ourselves against our own sharp sieve? It is the act of stepping back. It is the act of separating, and judging. It takes only one because the one becomes two.

We are constantly telling ourselves what we most want to know, and at the same time are deaf to it. Why does envy have such a fierce bite? Why do we fall silent or get worried just as our story is about to spring out of our control and into its own life? Whose shadow falls across the page?

The antidote to envy is one’s own work. Always one’s own work. Not the thinking about it. Not the assessing of it. But the doing of it. The answers you want can come only from the work itself.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing. They are the ones who discover what is most important and strangest and most pleasurable in themselves, and keep believing in the value of their work, despite the difficulties.

Successful writers are not the ones who write the best sentences. They are the ones who keep writing.

To gain the book, one must give up all hope for the book. It is the only way the book can get written.