My faith in Christ is central to my life. My conversion from a pessimistic atheist lost in a world I didn't understand, to an optimistic believer in a universe created and sustained by a loving God is crucial to me. But following Christ does not mean following His followers. Christ is infinitely more important than Christianity and always will be, no matter what Christianity is, has been, or might become.

What does all this mean finally, I kept asking like a college kid. Why does it make me want to cry? Maybe it’s that we are all outsiders, we are all making our own unusual way through a wilderness of normality that is just a myth.

To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner.

Do you know what it means to be loved by Death?... Do you know what it means to have Death know your name?

Invest in a feather duster - the possibilities are endless.

Protect your voice and your vision. If going on the Internet and reading Internet reviews is bad for you, don’t do it. … Do what gets you to write and not what blocks you. … Don’t take any guff off anybody.

I was typing away while everybody was dropping acid and smoking grass. I was known as my own square.