So often with beginning writers, the story that they want to start with is the most important story of their life - my molestation, my this, my horrible drug addiction - they want to tell that most important story, and they don't have the skills to tell it yet, so it ends up becoming a comedy. A powerful story told poorly becomes funny, it just makes people laugh behind their hands.

You had to risk your life to get love. You had to get right to the edge of death to ever be saved.

There will always be an underground.

I want to find something else, unknowable, some place that's not on the map. A real adventure.

First your parents, they give you your life, but then they try to give you their life.

You'll need to suffer to make any real art.

This deluded little rube who really thought the future would be any better. If you just worked hard enough. If you just learned enough. Ran fast enough. Everything would turn out right, and your life would amount to something.