The trouble with advice is that it's usually something you don't want to hear.

Let it go on record that any confusion arose simply because we lacked certain commonalities of reference.

Growing up, I'd already decided I wanted to be a beatnik. A Bohemian poet, I thought. Or a musician. Maybe an artist. I'd dress in black turtlenecks and smoke Gitanes. I'd listen to cool jazz in clubs, getting up to read devastating truths from my notebook, leaning against the microphone, cigarette dangling from my hand.

The thing to remember when you're writing," he said, " is, it's not whether or not what you put on paper is true. It's whether it wakes a truth in your reader. I don't care what literary device you might use, or belief systems you tap into--if you can make a story true for the reader, if you can give them a glimpse into another way of seeing the world, or another way that they can cope with their problems, then that story is a succes.

... we chase after ghosts and spirits and are left holding only memories and dreams. It's not that we want what we can't have; it's that we've held all we could want and then had to watch it slip away.

Gina always believed there was magic in the world. "But it doesn't work in the way it does in fairy tales," she told me. "It doesn't save us. We have to save ourselves.

The road leading to a goal does not separate you from the destination; it is essentially a part of it.