As an author I'm in my head all day and I worry that I lose touch with reality. But then my dog pees on my shoe and I know I've found it again.

I haven't written in a week. It's like holding your breath under water. You feel an awful constriction and then the instinct to propel yourself.

The best thing about being a writer is that 'work' is always something you love, plus usually accompanied by tea, coffee and cakes of some sort.

...if you've got writer's block, you aren't empty - maybe it's just like Twitter - overwhelmed, and loading seems to be taking a while...

Making love to me is amazing. Wait, I meant: making love, to me, is amazing. The absence of two little commas nearly transformed me into a sex god.


Be natural my children. For the writer that is natural has fulfilled all the rules of art."(Last words, according to Dickens's obituary in The Times.)

The sky never falls with the rain. It is never weighed down by all that it carries. It takes all of its anchorsand turns them into stars. Learn from this.

Knocking on a door is so violent. Instead, try talking to the door to get it to open up to you. I should write a self-help book for door-to-door salesmen.

My heart's scripture tastes foreign in the mouths of cowards and on the tongues of those who have never breathed inthe moon and breathed out the world.

...each person is required to ask, 'what is my authority?' - on what do you base your decisions? if it's yourself, then you are without excuse...

I jealously guard my research time and I love fully immersing myself in those dusty old books and papers. It's one of the most enjoyable parts of my job.

You are not your poetry. Your self-esteem shouldn't depend on whether you publish, or whether some editor or writer you admire thinks you're any good.

A writer should be a recluse. Why share words with a few friends in the moment when they can be written down in solitude and shared with everybody at any time?

A writer draws a road map where readers walks with their love, joy, anger, tears, and dismay. Every story, every poem, has different meanings for every reader.

If I were stranded on a desert island, and could have only one person and three things with me, I’d want Nietzsche, a pen, paper, and a stick-on mustache.