“I mostly want to remind her of the recipes of healing, and give her my own made-on-the spot remedy for the easing of her pain. I tell her, “Get a pen. Stop crying so you can write this down and start working on it tonight.” My remedy is long. But the last item on the list says: “When you wake up and find yourself living someplace where there is nobody you love and trust, no community, it is time to leave town – to pack up and go (you can even go tonight). And where you need to go is any place where there are arms that can hold you, that will not let you go.”

“Writer’s block’ is just a fancy way of saying ‘I don’t feel like doing any work today.”

“She thought a writer should work harder writing a book than she did reading it.”

“I write to believe in goodness.”

“Come, let’s be calm: no one incapable of restraint was ever a writer.”

“Hendaklah tukang-tukang cerita waspada terhadap hal-hal bohong dan hikayat-hikayat yang menyajikan perbuatan salah, atau yang tujuan baiknya tidak dapat difahamkan oleh umum. Atau, cerita itu merupakan satu pertarungan antara yang baik dengan buruk, lalu yang buruk mendapat pembelaan yang berlebihan sebelum dikalahkan oleh yang baik. Tanpa disedari, hal ini memberanikan orang berbuat dosa (Ihya’ Ulumuddin).”

“No one has the right to enter literature without fresh new ideas. We’ve got too many dexterous drudges as it is.”

“Writers are archeologists of themselves.”

“In my profession it isn’t a question of telling good literature from bad. Really good literature is seldom appreciated in its own day. The best authors die poor, the bad ones make money — it’s always been like that. What do I, an agent, get out of a literary genius who won’t be discovered for another hundred years? I’ll be dead myself then. Successful incompetents are what I need.”

“If you are a real writer, then just surrender to the writer’s life, all of it, even the bad stuff. When you do that, the beauty appears: the peace, the meaning, the joy, the fulfillment, the sense that you are doing what you were born to do and what could be better, in the end, than that?”

“lots of things happen in our lives without any apparent justification. but whatever happens to us,takes us one step ahead in the path of self realisation.The truth is we all are travellers in the life’s eternal journey, to meet for a short while,to care and share but we tend to forget that nothing lasts forever.if only we could cultivate a sense of detachment,life would have been much easier.”

“In my view, a writer is a writer because even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.”

“A book, a true book, is the writer’s confessional. For, whether he would have it so or not, he is betrayed, directly or indirectly, by his characters, into presenting publicly his innermost feelings.”

“my strength should not threaten you.my strength is not a threat to your strength.you are strong.you are beautiful.you are lush.you are powerful.as you are.as i am.imagine the force we would be togetherif we lifted each other up.imagine the force we would be togetherif we didn’t tear each other down.”