“There's a difference between writing for a living and writing for
life. If you write for a living, you make enormous compromises….
If you write for life, you'll work hard; you'll do what's honest,
not what pays”

“If you write for yourself, you'll reach all the people you want to write for.”

“The golden rule of writing is to write what you care about. If you care about your topic, you'll do your best writing, and then you stand the best chance of really touching a reader in some way.”

“You should write, first of all, to please yourself. You shouldn't care a damn about anybody else at all. But writing can't be a way of life - the important part of writing is living. You have to live in such a way that your writing emerges from it.”

“If a man can only write well when drunk, I'll tell him: get drunk. And if he tells me that his liver suffers with it, I'll answer: what's your liver? It's a dead thing that lives as long as you live, and the poems you'll write will live without a as long as.”

“You must be unintimidated by your own thoughts because if you write with someone looking over you shoulder, you'll never write.”

“Live your life as if you are writing your Biography.”

“Love. Fall in love and stay in love. Write only what you love, and love what you write. The word is love. You have to get up in the morning and write something you love, something to live for.”

“In order to write about life first you must live it.”

“If you stare into a flame
You'll get an eye full of energy
If you write your nightscapades
You'll get a dawn full of promises”