It's a good story, ' he said. He even grinned at me. 'I'll tell you.''Please, ' I said.And then he did.

He experienced the singular pleasure of watching people he loved fall in love with other people he loved.

What he knew, he knew from books, and books lied, they made things prettier.

. . . breathing slowly and rubbing his palm against his chest as if to soothe his heart.

There was something scary and anxiety-inducing about being in a space where nothing seemed to be forbidden to him, where everything was offered to him and nothing was asked in return

This isn't fair, he would think in those moments. This isn't friendship. It's something, but it's not friendship. He felt he had been hustled into a game of complicity, one he never intended to play.

And so I try to be kind to everything I see, and in everything I see, I see him.

He will be someone who is defined, first and always, by what he is missing.

My phone rang, and although it wasn't a sinister time of night, and although nothing had happened that I would later see as foreshadowing, I knew, I knew.

He had never done it before, and so he had no real understanding of how slow, and sad, and difficult it was to end a friendship.

Thank god he wasn't a writer, or he'd have nothing to write about.

There is an hidden energy in a child that works in all areas of growth and development

If we're not growing we must feel guilty because we are not fulfilling Christ's demand.

Congenial labor is the secret of happiness.

Promiscuity in men may cheapen love but sharpen thought. Promiscuity in women is illness, a leakage of identity.

To live without experiencing some shame and blushes of admiration would surely be a wretched life.

My dog didn't like me very much. My first dog, Dmitri, was a poodle. I used to think Dmitri was something I could play with and ride. I tried to ride a poodle. And then he bit me.

It is desire that engenders belief and if we fail as a rule to take this into account, it is because most of the desires that create beliefs end only with our own life.

The writing you allude to is a form of dissent, but it's also expressive of the need to evolve beyond what is turgid and stale in contemporary fiction.

Honesty and authenticity are a big deal for me.

We get angry when we feel like God owes us a better life than we have.