“I love revision. Where else can spilled milk be turned into cream?” – Katherine Patterson

“Inspiration is wonderful when it happens, but the writer must develop an approach for the rest of the time. . . The wait is simply too long.” – Leonard Bernstein

“I never gained control of my mind – how do you dominate an ocean? – but I began to form a relationship with it.” – Natalie Goldberg in Thunder & Lightning

“Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.” – H. Jackson Brown, Jr.

“I did not begin with craft, I began with strong feelings and worked toward craft.” – Dorothy Allison.

“To dream of the person you would like to be is to waste the person you are.”
– Sholem Asch (1880-1957) Yiddish novelist and dramatist

“Insanity: Doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” – Albert Einstein

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor. The enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft.”

– Anne LaMott from Bird by Bird

“To make democracy work, we must be a nation of participants, not simply observers.
One who does not vote has no right to complain.” – Louis L’Amour

“I knew I had to write the truth. We feel a tremendous relief when someone tells the truth.”

– Natalie Goldberg, commenting on her new memoir,
The Great Failure: A Bartender, A Monk, and My Unlikely to Truth