Alchemy of the Word: Writers Talk About Writing edited by Nicola Morris and Aimee Liu

Here is an excerpt, from Alchemy of the Word, that I am very grateful for. From Kyle Bass' commencement speech, "Dear Writer":

"Remember that it's in your aloneness that you're most able to search out words, forms, and structures, to discover and sharpen your instruments of expression, to utter, somehow, the unutterable, the beautiful, the truth of being alive and human and stunned, in awe of life's woes and wonders....Like all art, writing must, I think, finally be your deepest most honest response to the allure of truth, the terrible truth, the beautiful truth. And remember that the truth is always the truth of yourself. Use your aloneness, your exile, to conjure absence and its offspring longing for in absence and longing we find, I think, the beginning of truth, we set foot upon the first stones of the path toward truth. "

http://www.calartsandletters.org/alchemy-of-the-word/