Writing is the only thing that when I do it, I don't feel I should be doing something else.

I remember Spider Woman from the first page of Leslie’s novel Ceremony. She is the Thought Woman who names things and so brings them into being. Until then, I had imagined myself alone in believing that spiders should be the totem of writers. Both go into a space alone and spin out of their own bodies a reality that has never existed before.

Don't write when you're angry and under deadline, with time to test it only on friends who know what you mean, not on strangers who don't.

I would write about issues and people I met along the way, but not about the process and the life of being on the road.

For me, writing is the only thing that passes the three tests of metier: (1) when I'm doing it, I don't feel that I should be doing something else instead: (2) it produces a sense of accomplishment and, nce in a while, pride; and (3) it's frightening.

Most writers write to say something about other people - and it doesn't last. Good writers write to find out about themselves - and it lasts forever.

I continued for too long to do things that I already knew how to do, or to write stories that I was assigned instead of fighting for stories that I couldn't get, or doing ones that I thought were important on my own. The wasting of time is the thing I worry about the most. Because time is all there is.

Writing is always harder than talking.

I don't like writing. I like having written.