I hope that in my thirties I grow as a writer, push into new territory.

The beginning of the end can feel a lot like the middle when you are living in it.

When you're a kid, it's hard to tell the innocuous secrets from the ones that will kill you if you keep them.

Fiction helps me to reconnect with the true, deep weirdness inherent in everyday reality, in our dealings with one another, in just being alive.

It was sad and fierce all at once, alive with a lonely purity.

My older sister has entire kingdoms inside of her, and some of them are only accessible at certain seasons, in certain kinds of weather.

I spent most of my 20s with these alligator wrestlers in the swamps of South Florida.

It is a special kind of homelessness to be evicted from your dreams.

Self-disciplin e is necessary, but so is playfulness, flexibility, joy. When you stop demanding perfection of yourself, your writing desk will become a spacious place.

There are certain prehistoric things that swim beyond extinction.

You small mortals don't realize the power of your stories.

Your relationship to food is but a reflection of your relationship to yourself, as is everything in your life.

Given a sufficient level of perceived self-efficacy to take on threatening tasks, phobics perform them with varying amounts of fear arousal depending on the strength of their perceived self-efficacy

Sometimes, when you can't fix the problem on your own, you need to make some compromises and find the partners who can get the job done for you.

Millions of people in nearly 80 countries still live in fear of landmines and explosive remnants of war, which take an unacceptable toll on lives and limbs, and people's livelihoods

The right to be a cussed fool Is safe from all devices human, It's common (ez a gin'I rule) To every critter born of woman.

I find that the vast majority of people who are judging are just fearful or insecure.

And so long as I can laugh, never will I be poor. This then, is one of nature's greatest gifts and I will waste it no more.

I suppose I have an active imagination, and writing allows me to live it out.

The man who would choose security over freedom deserves neither.

Remember that every man is a variation of yourself. No man's guilt is not yours, nor is any man's innocence a thing apart.