Quote

Words are a pretty blunt instrument. There's always going to be slippage between the words and the infinite complexities of a thought. As a writer, I find that frustrating, but as a social animal, I wouldn't have it any other way.

There's almost a fear that if you understood too deeply the way you arrived at choices, you could become self-conscious. In any case, many ideas which are full of personal meaning seem rather banal when you put words to them.

The words are ludicrous at times, but you add the reality to it and that gives it the balance it has.

A writer has an inescapable voice. I think it's inherent in the nature, and I think that we don't control it anymore than we control what we want to write about.

Isn't that what writing is about? The constant attempt to understand the world?

In the hands of a great poet, words have ways of affecting us in ways we don't understand.

You know that something is really well written when you have to think so little about the words that are coming out of your mouth, and you're able to dwell in your own headspace to get there.

The reserve of modern assertions is sometimes pushed to extremes, in which the fear of being contradicted leads the writer to strip himself of almost all sense and meaning.

My personal opinion is that, if you're a professional writer, that you do have quotas. So every day I do try to write 800-1,200 words. I don't always achieve it, and the reality is that a lot of the words I write will end up on the cutting-room floor.