She tried to think of what to say to make it all better again, or at least the way it was before she'd made her confession, though she didn't regret having confessed. Perhaps that was what had been wrong with her all along. Now that the lie wasn't between them anymore, maybe she could love him again.

Writing is hard for every last one of us—straight white men included. Coal mining is harder. Do you think miners stand around all day talking about how hard it is to mine for coal? They do not. They simply dig.

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.

One Christmas at the very beginning of your twenties when your mother gives you a warm coat that she saved for months to buy, don’t look at her skeptically after she tells you she thought the coat was perfect for you. Don’t hold it up and say it’s longer than you like your coats to be and too puffy and possibly even too warm. Your mother will be dead by spring. That coat will be the last gift she gave you. You will regret the small thing you didn’t say for the rest of your life. Say thank you.

My family didn't go to church. Once when I slept over at the house of a friend, her parents brought me to Sunday school with her. I was given this little pamphlet of tiny poems about the natural world, about butterflies and sunsets. My 7-year-old self was so astounded by how these few words were creating pictures and feelings in me.

The story of human intimacy is one of constantly allowing ourselves to see those we love most deeply in a new, more fractured light. Look hard. Risk that.

You have to keep walking, no matter what. If you don't, it's a living death. You're just standing in one place dying.