Quotes of All Topics . Occasions . Authors
Wait until you are hungry to say something, until there is an aching in you to speak.
The correctness and quality of what you write do not matter; the act of writing does.
Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you where you need to go.
We never graduate from first grade. Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning.
If you are not afraid of the voices inside you, you will not fear the critics outside you.
Writing is the crack through which you can crawl into a bigger world, into your wild mind.
We shouldn't forget that the universe moves with us, is at our back with everything we do.
The deepest secret in our heart of hearts is that we are writing because we love the world.
Have compassion for yourself when you write. There is no failure - just a big field to wander in.
Know that you will eventually have to leave everything behind; the writing will demand it of you.
This is the practice school of writing. Like running, the more you do it, the better you get at it.
I still write with pen and paper and have someone type it on a computer. But rewriting I do by hand.
Failure is what we're all running from, we're always running toward success with failure at our back.
Be tough in the way a blade of grass is: rooted, willing to lean, and at peace with what is around it.
Actually, every time we begin, we wonder how we did it before, Each time is a new journey with no maps.
Because I've been doing my practice for so long, I knew what to do even under really hard circumstances.
One poem or story doesn't matter one way or the other. It's the process of writing and life that matters.
We must remember that everything is ordinary and extraordinary. It is our minds that either open or close.
Play around. Dive into absurdity and write. Take chances. You will succeed if you are fearless of failure.
I think talent is like a water table under the earth—you tap it with your effort and it comes through you.
We are each a concert reverberating with our whole lives and reflecting and amplifying the world around us.
After you have finished a piece of work, the work is then none of your business. Go on and do something else.
We are important and our lives are important, magnificent really, and their details are worthy to be recorded.
It is simply that person's time. Ours will come in this lifetime or the next. No matter. Continue to practice.
In the middle of the world, make one positive step. In the center of chaos, make one definitive act. Just write.
Women need space and silence. We too quickly give away our energy. There's something about holding that richness.
While I had cancer, I wrote these twenty-two personal essays about how I lived my life backed by Zen and writing.
Write what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about. Be willing to be split open.
Don't let yourself be thrown away....Continue on no matter what....Continue to make a positive effort for the good.
I feel very rich when I have time to write and very poor when I get a regular paycheck and no time at my real work.
You'll lose your reader if you are vague, not clear, and not present. We love details, personal connections, stories.
Even an ice cream parlor - a definite advantage - does not alleviate the sorrow I feel for a town lacking a bookstore.
Clarity and perseverance are difficult in American society because the basis of capitalism is greed and dissatisfaction.
I love and care about literature, and great writers are our teachers. You're studying their mind when you read their work.
Over and over, we have to go back to the beginning. We should not be ashamed of this. It is good. It's like drinking water.
Oh, my passion! That is what finally carried me through. Let passion burn all the way, heating up every layer of the psyche.
To stay close and intimate with experience is to stay close to the mind; the nitty gritty mind of the way things really are.
You don't know what you're doing. You're just hoping that people won't make fun of you. I had no idea how it would turn out.
I don't know anything but writing practice, and so what I really do is direct that energy as if it were flowing down a river.
I read Eve Ensler and thought it was fabulous. Not only that, but it was really the only thing I could relate to about cancer.
When you bring the darkness to the table, it doesn't rule you or hurt other people, but when we keep it secret, it's dangerous.
We walk through so many myths of each other and ourselves; we are so thankful when someone sees us for who we are and accepts us.
I feel that 'The Great Failure' is really a book written out of great love and a willingness to face all of who a human being is.
A responsibility of literature is to make people awake, present, alive. If the writer wanders, then the reader, too, will wander.
I consider writing practice a true Zen practice because it all comes back at you. You can't fool anyone because it's on the page.
Really you don't need more information. If you've lived twenty years, you probably have enough material for the rest of your life
The muscles of writing are not so visible, but they are just as powerful: determination, attention, curiosity, a passionate heart.
You don't need to go to a therapist, you don't need to do all kinds of things. If you want to write, you physically have to do it.
In the West, a teacher imparts knowledge to a student. In the East, a teacher transmits nothing more or less than his or her Being.
That's very nice if they want to publish you, but don't pay too much attention to it. It will toss you away. Just continue to write.