All Great Achievements Require Time.

I Want To Write So Well That A Person Is 30 Or 40 Pages In A Book Of Mine ... Before She Realizes She's Reading.

Whining Is Just Unbecoming.

To Take A Few Nouns, And A Few Pronouns, And Adverbs And Adjectives, And Put Them Together, Ball Them Up, And Throw Them Against The Wall To Make Them Bounce. That's What Norman Mailer Did. That's What James Baldwin Did, And Joan Didion Did, And That's What I Do - That's What I Mean To Do.

You Think You May Not Be Heard. Speak Anyway.

When My Grandmother Died, I Realized That Even If I Had Millions Of Dollars, I Couldn't Find Her Anywhere On Earth. My Next Thought Was That I Would Die. I Looked At My Life And Thought, "i'm Afraid To Die." I Concluded That Whether I Was Afraid Or Not, I Would Die. It Was One Of The Most Important Crossroads In My Life, Once I Realized That No Matter What, I Would Do This Thing, The Next Step Was To Think, "if I Am Going To Do The Most Difficult And Frightening Thing - Dying - Is It Possible That I Could Do Some Difficult And Impossible Things That Are Good?"