There is something so tender about this to me, about being willing to have your makeup wash off, your eyes tear up, your nose start to run. Its tender partly because it harkens back to infancy, to your mother washing your face with love and lots or water, tending to you, making you clean all over again.

Becoming a writer is about becoming conscious. When you're conscious and writing from a place of insight and simplicity and real caring about the truth, you have the ability to throw the lights on for your reader. He or she will recognize his or her life and truth in what you say, in the pictures you have painted, and this decreases the terrible sense of isolation that we have all had too much of.

Seeing yourself in print is such an amazing concept: you can get so much attention without having to actually show up somewhere... You don't have to dress up, for instance, and you can't hear them boo you right away.

It's a great time to be alive.

These are pictures of the people in my family where we look like the most awkward and desperate folk you ever saw, poster children for the human condition.

We all know we're going to die; what's important is the kind of men and women we are in the face of this.

So Rita and I decided that the most subversive, revolutionary thing I could do was to show up for my life and not be ashamed.