It takes courage to push yourself to places you have never been before... to test your limits... to break through barriers. And the day came when the risk it took to stay tight inside the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.

Everything with me is either worship and passion or pity and understanding. I hate rarely, though when I hate. I hate murderously.

This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun.

I write emotional algebra.

it was while helping others to be free that I gained my own freedom.

The final lesson a writer learns is that everything can nourish the writer. The dictionary, a new word, a voyage, an encounter, a talk on the street, a book, a phrase learned.

I stopped loving my father a long time ago. What remained was the slavery to a pattern.