This sadness wasn't a huge part of me--I wasn't remotely depressed--but still, it was like a stone I carried in my pocket. I always knew it was there. [p. 179]

I try to remember that the job - as well as the plight, and the unexpected joy - of the artist is to embrace uncertainty, to be sharpened and honed by it.

We can't protect ourselves from pain and heartache.

If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

When I lived in the city, I had learned to close my door against a lot of the noise, but when I open my door here, I'm not opening into the possibility that I'm going to run into somebody or be faced with a hundred choices about what I'm going to do, or which cafe I'm going to go to, or which way to distract myself.

There's nothing confessional about crafting and shaping a story out of a lived life. In fact, it's quite the opposite - the writer has to be able to transcend the life, to see it as if standing outside of it, in order to be able to make something of it. There's something enormously satisfying and gratifying about crafting something, taking all that chaos and giving it shape.

Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.