“I wondered if I was just the sum of my brain scan, little dots clustered in my frontal lobe. Is that where the poems came from?.”

But editors are still the world’s readers. And thus the eyes of the world.

No matter how many compromises were made along the way, no matter what happens in the future, a book is a thing to behold.

… but every person who does serious time with a keyboard is attempting to translate his version of the world into words so that he might be understood.

The writer labors in isolation, yet all that intensive, lonely work is in the service of communicating, is an attempt to reach another person.

In discovering books, you became free to explore the full range of human motives, desires, secrets, and lies. All my life, people have scolded me for having an excess of feeling, saying that I was too sensitive.

Fear of failure is the reason most often cited to explain why so many aspiring writers never realize their dreams. But I think it’s that same fear of failure that absolutely invigorates those who do push through-that is, the fear of not being heard.