If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

It is in the thousands of days of trying, failing, sitting, thinking, resisting, dreaming, raveling, unraveling that we are at our most engaged, alert, and alive.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Everything you need to know about life can be learned from a genuine and ongoing attempt to write

If I dismiss the ordinary—waiting for the special, the extreme, the extraordinary to happen - I may just miss my life.

I do whatever is necessary in order to maintain the equanimity we all need to withstand the disappointment and rejection that are the lot of every writer, no matter where we are in our careers.

The only graceful thing to do is recognize and embrace what is actually happening, rather than fight against it.

My desk is covered with talismans: pieces of rose quartz, wishing stones from a favorite beach.

How do we live the writer's life? There's only one simple answer: 'we write.'

If you are a writer or any kind of artist, if you change something as fundamental as where you live - the way you live - then I think you change the very instrument that is trying to make the art

Love is fickle, building relationship is rare

If he once failed as a father, it was a noble fail.

When we are motivated by goals that have deep meaning, by dreams that need completion, by pure love that needs expressing, then we truly live.

The ultimate manipulation is to kill someone, and sociopathy is murderous in a psychological sense - there's a kind of soul-murder going on.

Make the universe your companion, always bearing in mind the true nature of things-mountains and rivers, trees and grasses, and humanity-and enjoy the falling blossoms and the scattering leaves.

Love comes from the strangest places.

I was one man and I tackled a big railroad. I did the best I could.

I grew up in a big ol' Latin family, so that's all the music we used to play - salsa music. We'd always dance and have fun. You know how families get down, man! We just had fun with it.

I used to spend $25,000 of my own money on my short films, and I wouldn't make that back, not even close. So I think the Vimeo thing, because it's pay to download, that helps

Flowers really do intoxicate me.