So why do I talk about the benefits of failure? Simply because failure meant a stripping away of the inessential. I stopped pretending to myself that I was anything other than what I was, and began to direct all my energy into finishing the only work that mattered to me.

每位艺术家都将画笔浸入自己的灵魂，将自己的本性绘入画作。

The poet’s mission is to translate the invisible into the visible.

我总是试图在每个角色中找到人性，无论他们有多么不完美。

Fiction is like a spider's web, attached ever so lightly perhaps, but still attached to life at all four corners.

The writer must be a defender of the individual against the collective.