The thing that I do try to convey is, don't do what I did - but ask what I asked.

You were given life; it is your duty (and also your entitlement as a human being) to find something beautiful within life, no matter how slight.

The thing I love about Dickens is the omniscient, omnipotent narrator, and the great confidence of the narrator, which marks 19th-century novelists in general and Dickens in particular.

You are accidentally leaving your DNA all over everything in a novel because it's all coming from you.

David was catnip and kryptonite to me.

With each reunion (we) had to learn each other all over again. There was always that nervous moment at the airport when I would stand there waiting for him to arrive, wondering, Will I still know him? Will he still know me?

I felt like I was some kind of primitive spring-loaded machine, placed under far more tension than it had ever been built to sustain, about to blast apart at great danger to anyone standing nearby. I imagined my body parts flying off my torso in order to escape the volcanic core of unhappiness that had become: me.