I'm always wondering if he'll return. Sometimes I pray that he doesn't. And sometimes I hope he will. I wish on falling stars and eyelashes. Absence isn't solid the way death is. It's fluid, like language. And it hurts so much...so, so much.

I feel like so much of what I'm doing is making a road where there is no road and inviting people on that road with me. It's scary. It's scary, but I can't listen to the voices that are saying form is the only way, or that there is only this kind of form or that kind of form.

My favorite reader is one that revisits books and gets something new out of them each time.

I rewrite my books until they're mostly memorized so that's a lot of rewrites, a lot of time spent with my stories.

Maybe this was our last summer as best friends. I feel like something's going to change now and I'm not going to be able to change it back. —Margaret

I couldnt be a writer without hope. I think I became a writer because Im pretty optimistic.

That's what writing is. It's moving past your fear.