To laugh often and much; to win the respect of intelligent people and the affection of children... to leave the world a better place... to know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson
Your whole duty as a writer is to please and satisfy yourself, and the true writer always plays to an audience of one.
—W. Strunk & E.B. White
Writers live twice. They go along with their regular life, are as fast as anyone in the grocery store, crossing the street, getting dressed for work in the morning. But there's another part of them that they have been training. The one that lives everything a second time. That sits down and sees their life again and goes over it. Looks at the texture and details.
—Natalie Goldberg
The dream seemed real.
