They believe that if they do get published, a wonderful new life is in store. It will turn out that deep down they are really valuable people and will have lots of money from now on and really cool people like Ethan Hawke will be dropping by all the time. But it's a lie. Being a published writer will make them long to be ONLY as mentally ill as they are now. Their current level of obsession and doubt and self-loathing will look like the good old days. Honest.

I naturally prefer the company of people who hold grudges, as long as they are not held against me.

Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.

There are these people who keep taking you in and feeding you and loving you and making the world a tiny bit safer than it feels. People have community and family, but existentially we are deeply isolated.

You can safely assume that you've created God in your own image when it turns out that God hates all the same people you do.

He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.

Write regularly, whether you feel like writing or not, and whether you think what you're writing is any good or not.