Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.

Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.

If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.

I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.

poems are small moments of enlightenment

Writing is the act of discovery.

The responsibility of literatuure is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.

Begin with “I remember.” Write lots of small memories. If you fall into one large memory, write that. Just keep going. Don’t be concerned if the memory happened five seconds ago or five years ago.

It’s good to go off and write a novel, but don’t stop doing writing practice.

Keep your hand moving. (Don’t pause to reread the line you have just written. That’s stalling and trying to get control of what you’re saying.)

Suffering has been stronger than all other teaching, and has taught me to understand what your heart used to be. I have been bent and broken, but - I hope - into a better shape.

You'd be teary, too, yes you would be, " he said, "if a girl and her bed had crashed into your head.

The words are meaningless except in terms of feeling. Does anyone act as the result of thought or does feeling stimulate action and sometimes thought implement it.

I advise people not to research radiation unless they are prepared to take the risks to their own health and mental functioning that the various forms of radiation are known to present to the human.

The means by which we live have outdistanced the ends for which we live. Our scientific power has outrun our spiritual power. We have guided missiles and misguided men.

If somebody thinks wearing pretty dresses onstage somehow discredits us that's pretty absurd.

The bird loves her nest.

All living creatures are sparks from the radiation of God’s brilliance, emerging from God like the rays of the sun.

Iran said it will give up trying to make a nuclear weapon. But it got awkward when Iran said, 'But just for Lent. We'll start again on Monday.'

If you have to change something about you to be in a part, I don't think it's easy to do. You should just pick the part where you can just be yourself.