“Forget all the rules. Forget about being published. Write for yourself and celebrate writing.”

“Writers end up writing about their obsessions. Things that haunt them; things they can’t forget; stories they carry in their bodies waiting to be released.”

“The reason a writer writes a book is to forget a book and the reason a reader reads one is to remember it.”

“Good writing is remembering detail. Most people want to forget. Don't forget things that were painful or embarrassing or silly. Turn them into a story that tells the truth.”

“The experience was an exciting one for me. It illustrated that writing was about risk—about risking everything. And that the value of the writing is not in what you publish but in its consequences. If you set out to describe reality, then the influence of the writing is upon reality.”

“Nobody has to read this book. Nobody has to pick it up. Nobody has to open it. And if they open it and read it, they don't have to like it. And if you read it and you dislike it, you don't have to remain silent about it. You can write to me, you can complain about it, you can write to the publisher, you can write to the papers, you can write your own book. You can do all those things, but there your rights stop. No one has the right to stop me writing this book. No one has the right to stop it being published, or sold, or bought, or read.”

“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.”

“But life isn’t about learning to forgive those who have hurt you or forgetting your past. It’s about learning to forgive yourself for being human and making mistakes.”

“The best way to become a successful writer is to read good writing, remember it, and then forget where you remember it from.”

“Above all, do not forget your duty to love yourself.”