I was purely content to sit in the car and wander around my own mind. Watching the world itself, the people in it, and my whole internal life was more than enough to keep me entertained.

Badass is a juvenile aspiration.

My father has said a hundred times, and I have paid attention, that it's stupid to let money be the reason you don't do something.

I was purely content to sit in the car and wander around my own mind. Watching the world itself, the people in it, and my whole internal life was more than enough to keep me entertained.

The reader reads aloud, with a sing-song up … then down … then down again cadence. My mood shifts from merely reluctant to derisive. It’s a tired reading style. I’m sick of it. It attaches more importance to the words than the words themselves—as they’ve been arranged—could possibly sustain, and it gives poets and poetry a bad name.

I’m not afraid of the real truth. There is nothing you can tell me about yourself that is going to make me clutch my pearls.

You are always going to face forces that can bring you to your knees.