I am an advocate of honesty and openness, and I think deceit is a dangerous seed to plant and let grow in relationships.

It's a long life, sweetheart, and time heals all wounds.

I’m a free spirit who never had the balls to be free.

A lot of people go off and have fun adventures, or hard adventures, and their impulse is to write about them right away. What really makes a difference is having some perspective on what happened.

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.

And if you're gonna be a writer, you just truly have to be a writer. You have to throw yourself into it and deal with the negative consequences of that. And there are negative consequences. I mean, there are. But, it's also true that you wouldn't be interviewing me right now if I had worked at the post office. You wouldn't. I would be still writing, but I wouldn't have gotten as far as I've gotten, because I wouldn't have had the time.

But the reality is we often become our kindest, most ethical selves only by seeing what it feels like to be a selfish jackass first.