Real love moves freely in both directions. Don't waste your time on anything else.

Be about ten times more magnanimous than you believe yourself capable of. Your life will be a hundred times better for it.

The universe, I'd learned, was never, ever kidding. It would take whatever it wanted and it would never give it back.

Healing is a small and ordinary and very burnt thing. And it's one thing and one thing only: it's doing what you have to do.

I'm reading George Saunders's story collection, "Tenth of December." He was my mentor at the University of Syracuse. The stories are mind-blowing like everyone says.

I didn't feel sad or happy. I didn't feel proud or ashamed. I only felt that in spite of all the things I'd done wrong, in getting myself here, I'd done right.

You don't have to get a job that makes others feel comfortable about what they perceive as your success. You don't have to explain what your plan to do with your life. You don't have to justify your education by demonstrating its financial rewards. You don't have to maintain an impeccable credit score. Anyone who expects you to do any of those things has no sense of history of economics or science or the arts.