I felt something growing in me that was strong and real.

Let yourself be gutted. Let it open you. Start here.

I walked all those miles, I learned all those lessons. It's as if my new life was the gift I got at the end of a long struggle.

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

Writing is such a strangely and radically private act, and yet its purpose is this great sense of connection and community. I mean, I wanted people to love the book. And the only way to get them to love it is to try to make it good for them. So of course the audience has to be considered.

It seemed to me the way it must feel to people who cut themselves on purpose. Not pretty, but clean. Not good, but void of regret. I was trying to heal. Trying to get the bad out of my system so I could be good again. To cure me of myself.

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.