When you can cross the highwire without falling off, you are in a state of perfect balance, perfect grace. It is the same with obedience. When you submit, submit totally, you enter that same equilibrium, surrender and grace. This is the meaning of erotic.

There is a word I have always avoided in my writing, my life, my thoughts. That word is love. What does it mean? How do you deal with it? If you find it and lose it, how do you get over it? Love is something you feel and when you feel it you can__ trust it or define it. How can you sustain love for a long time? A short time? You may love your family, your friends. But you don__ invite them inside your body.

Just write. That's my only tip. And read. I guess that's two.

Writers strive for the impossible: perfection. Even the universe is flawed.

I am forever an advocate of books, both the reading of them and the writing. There is something sacred to me in that community. Because writing--and reading--is a solitary business. And it__ good to know I__ not alone.

There was a day when writers actually read," he grumbles. "They could quote Keats and Socrates. Now anyone with a keyboard and a fifth-grade education can call themselves a writer.