I'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.

The frustration of being marginalized often gets misdirected at the most visible members of one's own community, because they are more accessible than the real agents of marginalization.

Abandonment by a lover won't kill us. But it awakens the parts of us that remember when it could.

It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.

Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.

New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light.

You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.

I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.

Torch songs are confessions. They are an expression of feeling that cannot be concealed or contained or minimized. They are marked by anguish, yes, but also by yielding.

The craft work becomes a mediator between me and my secrets, between me and the listener.

Letting go of the cozy stories you've been carrying around is devastating. But there's more room for new stuff after you do it.

Moving on is easy. It's staying moved on that's trickier.

You were wrong, Gram, " I said softly, tone emotionless because I was resigned to the awful, lonely truth of it. "Love doesn't save our souls. It kills them.

Entrepreneurship is like a weighing machine whose load content should tilt towards passion to solve a pressing need, more than passion to make money.

For sixteen years, I had seen just emptiness in those eyes. Her eloquent eyes had lost their expressiveness to destiny.

I'm a Gemini, so I change my mind every day.

Now I'm looking for more of a dressy, man wear, you know, kinda cool.

It is clear that no one will achieve any kind of objective through the force of violence, and that no one will make Spaniards yield to threats of guns, whoever may be holding them

The unbeliever knows his Koran best.

It is, after all, the dab of grit that seeps into an oyster's shell that makes the pearl, not pearl-making seminars with other oysters.