No one knows how to write a novel until it's been written

Young people believe that regret is something you will never feel if you simply do as you please, but sometimes it is a matter of degree.

I wrote to find beauty and purpose, to know that love is possible and lasting and real, to see day lilies and swimming pools, loyalty and devotion, even though my eyes were closed, and all that surrounded me was a darkened room. I wrote because that was who I was at the core, and if I was too damaged to walk around the block, I was lucky all the same. Once I got to my desk, once I started writing, I still believed anything was possible.

The voice that arises out of the silence is something no one can imagine until it is heard. It roars when it speaks, it lies to you and convinces you, it steals from you and leaves you without a single word of comfort.

I didn’t want to be prideful anymore. I wanted to be as hard as and brittle as the stones I carted into the woods. Stones that could not feel or cry or see. I wished not to feel anything at all. In no time, what I wished for, I became.

How could I have been so stupid to ignore everything I’d had in my life? The color red alone was worth kingdoms.

He was in love, and people in that condition did stupid, unfathomable things. They were all flawed, every single one.