WRITE EVERYTHING YOU know about dying. Just go. Don’t think, What does she mean by that? Dive in. We die in all kinds of ways. Who died? When did they die? how? why?
To read and to write is to be empowered. No shackle can ultimately hold you.
Explore the rugged edge of thought . Like grating a carrot, give the paper the colorful coleslaw of your consciousness.
We must become writers who accept things as they are, come to love the details, and step forward with a yes on our lips so there can be no more noes in the world, noes that invalidate life and stop th...
There is no security no assurance that because we wrote something good two months ago we will do it again. Actually every time we begin we wonder how we ever did it before.
Keep your hand moving
Do all my original writing by hand. I have greater mobility: I can write on planes, with friends in cafés. Plus it feels more connected with my body; my hand moves with my arm and shoulder, which is c...
We must continue to open in the face of tremendous opposition. No one is encouraging us to open and still we must peel away the layers of the heart.
This all happened fifteen years ago. A friend once told me: Trust in love and it will take you where you need to go. I want to add, Trust in what you love, continue to do it, and it will take you wher...
Miyamoto Musashi’s actual burial ground was in close range. According to legend he had been buried in full samurai regalia clutching his faithful sword. The last line of the translation: He died lonel...
Can’t take myself too seriously when I open
And what great writers actually pass on is not so much their words, but they hand on their breath at their moments of inspiration.
Never underestimate people. They do desire the cut of truth.
We are very arrogant to think we alone have a totally original mind. We are carried on the backs of all the writers who came before us.
My desolation was that no one knew me and I did not know myself. My family's life was my life. I knew nothing else. I was clothed, fed, given a bed to sleep in, encouraged to marry early and rich, and...
Go ahead; take Kant's PROLEGOMENA TO ANY FUTURE METAPHYSIC and get it to show what he is telling. We would all be a lot happier.
Writing practice brings us back to the uniqueness of our own minds and an acceptance of it. We all have wild dreams, fantasies, and ordinary thoughts. Let us to feel the texture of them and not be afr...
To encounter a fine book
Of course, we are drawn to teachers who unconsciously mirror our own psychology. None of us are clean. We all make mistakes. It's the repetition of those mistakes and the refusal to look at them that...
If you never sit still, it does not even hint to that deeper self in you that you are interested. By practice, by showing up, we are signaling that deep motor, that hum of life, that we are ready: Hel...