The only magic we have is what we make in ourselves, the muscles we build up on the inside, the sense of belief we create from nothing.

Beauty is a hard thing. Beauty is a mean story. Beauty is slender girls who die young, fine-featured delicate creatures about whom men write poems. Beauty, my first girlfriend said to me, is that inner quality often associated with great amounts of leisure time. And I loved her for that.

Fiction is a piece of truth that turns lies to meaning.

Two or three things I know for sure, and one of them is the way you can both hate and love something you are not sure you understand.

Why write stories? To join the conversation.

I told her, Don't touch me that way. Don't come at me with that sour-cream smile. Come at me as if I were worth your life - the life we make together. Take me like a turtle whose shell must be cracked, whose heart is ice, who needs your heat. Love me like a warrior, sweat up to your earlobes and all your hope between your teeth. Love me so I know I am at least as important as anything you have ever wanted.

What's the best thing you can do for your writing? Construct a boring life.