Happiness compresses time, makes it dense and bright, pocketsized.

You should not have assault rifles in your home.

I used to do everything to keep a wall up around myself and keep my life quiet so that I could write.

I believe that, more than anything else, this grief of constantly having to face down our own inadequacies is what keeps people from being writers. Forgiveness, therefore, is key. I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing. Again and again throughout the course of my life I will forgive myself.

Listen she said, everything ends, every single relationship you will ever have in your lifetime is going to end.... I'll die, you'll die, you'll get tired of each other. You don't always know how it's going to happen, but it is always going to happen. So stop trying to make everything permanent, it doesn't work. I want you to go out there and find some nice man you have no intention of spending the rest of your life with. You can be very, very happy with people you aren't going to marry.

Just because things hadn't gone the way I had planned didn't necessarily mean they had gone wrong.

I can't write the book I want to write, but I can and will write the book I am capable of writing.