Quote

A person who's only suffering can't write a poem. There are choices to be made, and you need to be objective.

When we're looking for compassion, we need someone who is deeply rooted, is able to bend and, most of all, embraces us for our strengths and struggles.

I identified in a very deep way with the individuals I was writing about because the theme that runs through this story is of extraordinary hardship and the will to overcome it.

A writer has to live with a sense of honor.

Difficulty creates the opportunity for self-reflection and compassion.

The writer is both a sadist and a masochist. We create people we love, and then we torture them. The more we love them, and the more cleverly we torture them along the lines of their greatest vulnerability and fear, the better the story.

The individual is capable of both great compassion and great indifference. He has it within his means to nourish the former and outgrow the latter.

Ultimately what I end up writing about is helplessness and the flipside of that, empowerment.

Whether you want to entertain or to provoke, to break hearts or reassure them, what you bring to your writing must consist of your longings and disappointments.

I mostly write about the working poor. Somehow, they're not being written about much anymore. I'm very interested in people who are in a situation that needs a little puzzling out. The thing that gets me started on a story is a person in a tough situation.