We are all swimmers before the dawn of oxygen and earth. We all carry the memory of that breathable blue past.

Words carry oceans on their small backs.

Sometimes a mind is just born late, coming through waves on a slower journey. You were never, in the end, alone. Isn’t it a blessing, what becomes from inside the alone.

It is possible to make family any way you like. It is possible to love men without rage. There are thousands of ways to love men.

Language is a metaphor for experience. It’s as arbitrary as the mass of chaotic images we call memory–but we can put it into lines to narrativize over fear.

my parents Oedipal fakers

When you let go of past pain, believe in yourself, and follow your dreams—you can find true happiness!

When in love, every soul becomes a poet.

A heart can be shared.Who decided that a 'broken heart' was a bad thing?

Learn from the mistakes of others - you can't live long enough to make them all yourself.

Laughter is the only thing that'll cut trouble down to a size where you can talk to it.

What? You seek something? You wish to multiply yourself tenfold, a hundredfold? You seek followers? Seek zeros!

I know for a fact that - it's just the way our biases work now in the industry of literature, but certainly a short story collection does not receive the same kind of attention as a novel.

I heard someone say he [Carl Sandburg] was the kind of writer who had everything to gain and nothing to lose by being translated into another language.

The sins of teachers are the teachers of sin.

The fights I fought... cost a lot --the fight for the assault-weapons ban cost 20 members their seats in Congress. The NRA is the reason the Republicans control the House.