Sometimes I believe that God wants to try me, both now and later on; I must become good through my own efforts, without examples and without good advice. Then later on I shall be all the stronger. Who besides me will ever read these letters? From whom but myself shall I get comfort? As I need comforting often, I frequently feel weak and dissatisfied with myself; my shortcomings are too great. I know this, and every day I try to improve myself, again and again.

I can't keep that up...finally I twist my heart round again, so that the bad is on the outside and the good is on the inside and keep trying to find a way of becoming what I would so like to be, and what I could be, if...there weren't any other people living in the world.

don't dare do anything anymore, 'cause I'm afraid it's not allowed.

The weak shall fall and the strong shall survive and not be defeated.

My life here has gotten better, much better. God has not forsaken me, and He never will.

Writing is about hypnotizing yourself into believing in yourself, getting some work done, then unhypnotizing yourself and going over the material coldly.

Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I've learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.

One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do-- you can either type or kill yourself.

Being a writer is part of a noble tradition, as is being a musician — the last egalitarian and open associations. No matter what happens in terms of fame and fortune, dedication to writing is a marching-step forward from where you were before, when you didn't care about reaching out to the world, when you weren't hoping to contribute, when you were just standing there doing some job into which you had fallen.

You begin to string words together like beads to tell a story. You are desperate to communicate, to edify or entertain, to preserve moments of grace or joy or transcendence, to make real or imagined events come alive. But you cannot will this to happen. It is a matter of persistence and faith and hard work. So you might as well just go ahead and get started.

How are we going to get through this craziness?" I asked. There was silence for a moment. "Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said.

I just try to warn people who hope to get published that publication is not all that it is cracked up to be. But writing is. Writing has so much to give, so much to teach, so many surprises.