Real optimism is not the pep talk you give yourself. It is earned through the labor involved in emotional housekeeping.

Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.

So that's what I'm here to become. And suddenly, this word fills me with a brand of sadness I haven't felt since childhood. The kind of sadness you feel at the end of summer. When the fireflies are gone, the ponds have dried up and the plants are wilted, weary from being so green.

Before I'm a writer, I'm definitely a reader and when I read memoir, I really want it to be true.

As a child, I was never drawn toward depraved or extreme situations; I really wanted a normal little childhood. Unfortunately, that's just not what happened.

I hate news and information and anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live.

A lot of being a writer doesn't have anything to do with writing. It's ironic - I have to squeeze the books in, even though that's what it's all about.