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.

...the other half of rising—the very half that makes rising necessary—is having been nailed to the cross.

What’s important is that you make the leap. Jump high and hard with intention and heart. Pay no mind to the vision that the commission made up. It’s up to you to make your life. Take what you have and stack it up like a tower of teetering blocks. Build your dream around that.

I hope when people ask what you're going to do with your English degree and/or creative writing degree you'll say: Continue my bookish examination of the contradictions and complexities of human motivation and desire; or maybe just: Carry it with me, as I do everything that matters. And then smile very serenely until they say, Oh.

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.

In your twenties you're becoming who you're going to be and so you might as well not be an asshole.

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.