Let your conscience be your guide.

I believe that - if you are serious about a life of writing, or indeed about any creative form of expression - that you should take on this work like a holy calling.

You write fiction, you're writing memoir, and when you're writing memoir, you're writing fiction.

in stillness, I watched myselfget eaten by mosquitoes... the itch was maddening at first but eventually it just melded into a general burning feeling and i rode that heat to a mld euphoria. I allowed the pain to lose its specific associations and become pure sensation... and that eventually lifted me out of myself and into meditation.

This is a good sign, having a broken heart. It means we have tried for something.

When you have only two minutes to say good-bye to the person you love most in the world, and you don’t know when you’ll see each other again, you can become logjammed with the effort to say and do and settle everything at once.

Learning how to discipline your speech is a way of preventing your energies from spilling out of you through the rupture of your mouth, exhausting you and filling the world with words, words, words instead of serenity, peace and bliss.