Never save your best ideas for last.

The poetry of the heart follows no rules.

Always allow the painting to paint itself.

Always allow the novel to write itself.

It usually takes over after you've done 3/4 of the work.

Never be without a notebook and pen when ideas descend on you like a rainfall of golden light.

Labradorite on your writing desk allows your thoughts to flow without limit.

If your writing tends to be tentative and sketchy, switch to a darker ink or a bigger and bolder font.

Every single thought has one or more junctions. Be aware of all of them and explore the wonders of three-dimensional thinking.

When a writer's works are as yet immature, they will merely reflect what he wants very much but cannot have.

Academics will impose hard and fast rules about poetry for purposes of promoting it as a craft, but poetry is as diverse as personality, and the poems you write, no matter what forms they take, are fingerprints of your soul--they are unique and they will never be like anyone else's.

In every time of crisis, do not rush to record what is happening around you. Instead, exercise your powers of observation, especially through your physical senses.

It is after the crisis is over that you will be able to write about everything.

Many writers establish their careers as classroom teachers because their students, co-faculty members, and administrators not only provide them the support they want but also treat them as though they were the greatest writers in the world, but those kinds of support and adulation are hardly the gauges of being a successful writer.

Know that, when you are reading a creative work, you are riding the author's mental horses, but that, sometimes, those horses are not strong enough to carry you across the deepest streams.