I think what makes you feel so connected with certain writers isn't a matter of autobiographical detail, but that the emotions are real. The way some writers are able to channel themselves through the form.

No one...can live in this heightened state of reflective receptivity forever. Because this empathy's involuntary, there's terror here. Loss of control, a seepage. Becoming someone else or worse: becoming nothing but the vibratory field between two people.

Writing can be bad and still be part of something good. That 'art' is really 'artifact,' Exhibit A, Exhibit B, of something else: a person's whole experience and life. And that always there's the chance that this will fail. That things will not work out.

Nothing's ever entirely new. It's more a matter of what gets picked up from the past at each time.

Why do people think that we’re degraded when we’re examining positions of degradation, or examining the cycle of our own degradation?

Why does everybody think that women are debasing themselves when we expose the conditions of our debasement?

I think writers always want to be taken seriously as writers, but it's not always possible. There's a difference between persistence and banging your head against the same wall a hundred times. Sometimes it's better to look away from the wall and see what else might be available that's easier.