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.

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.

A sincere decision to make is to refuse to give up until the society experiences the defeat of every form of injustice and ungodliness.

The chief error in philosophy is overstatement.

I don't think everybody wanted to be on [new Star Trek series] . I certainly didn't.

My mother taught me that the universe guides, teaches, and offers up gifts... even when bad things happen.

Yesterday is gone and tomorrow has not yet come; we must live each day as if it were our last so that when God calls us we already, and prepared, to die with a clean heart.

A boy is the only known substance from which a man can be made.

A woman's beauty is one of her great missions.

No veep character is as absurd as Donald Trump.

If you live the life you love, you get the blessing from above.

Hanging and wiving goes by destiny.