Stay conscious and alive, day in and day out.

My chest bumps like a dryer with shoes in it.

To experience commitment as the loss of options, a type of death, the death of childhood's limitless possibility, of the flattery of choice without duress-this will happen, mark me. Childhood's end.

What teachers and the administration in that era never seemed to see was that the mental work of what they called daydreaming often required more effort and concentration than it would have taken simply to listen in class. Laziness is not the issue. It is just not the work dictated by the administration.

Fiction, poetry, music...these are the places (for me) where loneliness is countenanced, stared down, transfigured, treated.

Whatever you get paid attention for is never what you think is most important about yourself.

She had a brainy girls discomfort about her own beauty and its effects on folks.