I remember being absolutely rocked to my core by how profoundly I could love another human being.

I am, as they say, the classic starving artist.

...the ultimate dwindling resource in the human arrangement isn’t cheap oil or potable water or even common sense, but mercy.

Acceptance is a small quiet room.

The only way I've been able to stay informed without letting fury rule my life is to channel my rage into something that ultimately feels like love to me. The place I do that the best is in my writing. That's where I feel like I can tap into the power of story and maybe bring something good into the world.

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 if I could go back in time, I wouldn't do a single thing differently. What if all those things I did were the things that got me here?