The craft work becomes a mediator between me and my secrets, between me and the listener.

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.

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.

Life is a struggle, from the agonies of birth to the railing against death. Devour or be devoured. The law of the wild.

Kiss me back into place and remind me why we can't be together.

I had entered a world that no one with an evolved sense of joie de vivre would touch with a barge pole - it's called "Joining the Property Market" and it trumps war for stress!

He who is shipwrecked twice is foolish to blame the sea.

Progress means movement in a desired direction, and we do not all desire the same things for our species.

Michael Cole, The Rock knows that you have never, EVER, had a piece of poontang pie!

As a human being Plato mingles regal, exclusive, and self-contained features with melancholy compassion.

But oh! as to embrace me she inclin'd, I wak'd, she fled, and day brought back my night.

One who truly meets the world goes out also to God.

Yea, I had a dream too. Looks like mine came true.