In my opinion, actual heroism, like actual love, is a messy, painful, vulnerable business—and I wanted to try to reflect that.

Some tourists think Amsterdam is a city of sin, but in truth it is a city of freedom. And in freedom, most people find sin.

Amsterdam is like the rings of a tree: It gets older as you get closer to the center.

I feel like crying, so I must be crying, but it's impossible to tell because I'm underwater.

...And in freedom, most people find sin.

So I walked back to my room and collapsed on the bottom bunk, thinking that if people were rain, I was drizzle and she was a hurricane.

A taste so profound and complex that it can't even be compared to other tastes, only to emotions. Cheesy waffles, I was thinking, tastes like love without the fear of love's dissolution.

My thoughts are stars I cannot fathom into constellations.

The only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive.

All those paper people living in their paper houses, burning the future to stay warm.

I would always love Alaska Young, my crooked neighbor, with all my crooked heart.

Owning Languages, Owning identities.

My mother would say it is literally ghost writers who come to me.

Forty is better than 30. I have a better understanding of who I am, what makes me tick, what's okay and not okay.

Longer than there've been fishes in the ocean, higher than any bird ever flew, longer than there've been stars up in the heavens, I've been in love with you.

To be a mother is a magical experience. The whole body is transformed by this.

When Chong made to sit down next to her, Lilah drew her knife and stabbed the point into the earth between them. "I can see that you need some quiet time," he said and scuttled quickly away.

I am the excuse to explore your identity. To be exactly who you are and to feel unafraid. To not judge yourself, to not hate yourself.

You have to embrace the world if you want to live in it now.

I felt that it's best just to be as transparent as possible.

I know that there are many things I could do, but I'm not interested. It's more important to be loving and to have a lively mind.