Starting is hard so I really need to give myself permission to do a bad job. I always give myself leave to write total nonsense for as long as I need to release the pressure, because it's really hard to start if you feel like that first sentence you write has to actually mean something.

Grief was like a newborn, and the first three months were hard as hell, but by six months you'd recognized defeat, shifted your life around, and made room for it.

I allowed myself to suffer how jarringly destructive the present feels and how fragile the past.

Parents were the only ones obligated to love you; from the rest of the world you had to earn it.

To write a story, I think you really have to open yourself up to the world.

She spilled rice on my knee, and she smiled. I wanted her to spill a thousand things on me, lava, acid, bricks, anything, and smile each time

She existed in her friends; there she was. All the parts of herself she'd forgotten. She knew herself best when she was with them.