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.

I had diverged, digressed, wandered, and become wild. I didn't embrace the word as my new name because it defined negative aspects of my circumstances or life, but because even in my darkest days—those very days in which I was naming myself—I saw the power of the darkness. Saw that, in fact, I had strayed and that I was a stray and that from the wild places my straying had brought me, I knew things I couldn't have known before.

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.

Work hard. Do good. Be incredible!

Believe in the integrity and value of the jagged path. We don't always do the right thing on our way to rightness.

There is a path toward the light. The one that goes blink, blink, blink inside your chest when you know what you're doing is right. Listen to it. Trust it. Let it make you stronger than you are.

…the death of my mother was the thing that made me believe the most deeply in my safety: nothing bad could happen to me, I thought. The worst thing already had.