Growing up as a mixed-race kid myself, when you are in the middle of it and you're young...you don't think about it consciously. It's your reality.

The feeling it gave me was an odd combination of weightless self-pity and excitement. I understood my life was meaningless, and this knowledge freed me up to accomplish absolutely anything.

I guess I don't really know what I want to do, either. Sometimes I feel like a shook-up bottle of soda. Like, I have all this passion that wants to explode, but I don't know where to aim it yet.

I was really drawn to spoken-word style poetry. I loved the rhythms, and for some reason, I was just drawn to this poetry as a way of expressing my feelings, because I didn't have any other outlet.

When I'm there, it's pure silence. There are other writers there, too, and I get super competitive. I have this weird fear that some guy next to me is writing this amazing novel, so I got to compete.

Being the first to go to college in my family was a great thing, but it was also a source of guilt. I felt like almost a sellout going to college.

I feel like I have a lot of novel ideas, but they often come up while I'm already in the process of working on a book. You have to watch out with the slutty new idea.

To me, if the writing doesn't have rhythm, it feels dead. I lose all confidence. The music has to emerge to feel confident enough to move on to the next major chapter.

But not just alive like I was yesterday and the day before. Alive like I knew I was alive. Like I could feel the breaths coming into my chest. And I knew I was the person inside my own body.

Sometimes when you're surrounded by dirt...you're a better witness for what's beautiful.

I stayed there on the floor like that for a long, long time.Eating and crying.Crying and eating.

The Glory Is Always Hidden Between The Lines Of the Story

The closer you got to someone, the more it would destroy you when they were inevitably gone.

Italian men do appreciate beautiful women. They're not afraid of the beauty, which is nice.

It would take one million men, one hundred years

I like walking on the edge.

Don't fight darkness. Bring the light, and darkness will disappear.

Work is a dull thing; you cannot get away from that. The only agreeable existence is one of idleness, and that is not, unfortunately, always compatible with continuing to exist at all.

Intellectually I'm probably a Republican.

The simplest and most effective way to sanctity is to disappear into the background of ordinary every day routine.

But we cannot just take this historical fact for granted. We must make it live.