I haven't always been a writer and I suppose I tiptoed around the idea of writing full time, because it's so isolating.

It was as if Hannah had sprung a leak and her character, usually so meticulous and contained, was spilling all over the place.

Happiness is a hound dog in the sun. We aren't on Earth to be happy, but to experience incredible things. - Hannah Schneider

People had an illogical, self-serving rationale when it came to interpreting the behavior of others.

In college I studied '60s and '70s radicalism, student activism, forms of political violence, groups like the Weathermen, the Black Panthers, the Symbionese Liberation Army, the New Left.

But most critically, sweet, never try to change the narrative structure of someone else's story, though you will certainly be tempted to, as you watch those poor souls in school, in life, heading unwittingly down dangerous tangents, fatal digressions from which they will unlikely be able to emerge. Resist the temptation. Spend your energies on your story. Reworking it. Making it better.

Some people, every now and then, simply had to have One Too Many, go drifty voiced and slouch mouthed, swimming willfully around in their own sadness as if it were hot springs.