"Normally, in anything I do, I'm fairly miserable. I do it, and I get grumpy because there is a huge, vast gulf, this aching disparity, between the platonic ideal of the project that was living in my head, and the small, sad, wizened, shaking, squeaking thing that I actually produce."
"Writing may or may not be your salvation; it might or might not be your destiny. But that does not matter. What matters right now are the words, one after another. Find the next word. Write it down."
"And life is a good thing for a writer. It's where we get our raw material, for a start. We quite like to stop and watch it."
"Because if you don't stand up for the stuff you don't like, when they come for the stuff you do like, you've already lost."
"The main rule of writing is that if you do it with enough assurance and confidence, you’re allowed to do whatever you like. (That may be a rule for life as well as for writing. But it’s definitely true for writing.) So write your story as it needs to be written. Write it honestly, and tell it as best you can. I’m not sure that there are any other rules. Not ones that matter."
"I hope that in this year to come, you make mistakes. Because if you are making mistakes...you're Doing Something."