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.

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.

Being celibate was so wonderful. It taught me a lot about love, but even more about my own self outside of love. I'd never met myself out of love before, really.

I will love you till my soul loses its consciousness.

Wow, " she said. "It's like you're teaching me something and being all wise.""You are not easy to get along with, " Skulduggery said.

Either you follow-up or you fold-up

In real friendship the judgment the genius the prudence of each party become the common property of both.

Artistic license sneered through the thin fabric.

Freedom of speech doesn't protect speech you like; it protects speech you don't like.

Look deeply. Don't miss the inherent quality and value of everything.

The sound of progress is perhaps the sound of plummeting hypotheses.

Every author has different ways of writing and what works for one author does not necessarily work for another.

Never forget that it is not a pneumonia, but a pneumonic man who is your patient.