As your lover describes you, so you are.

Writers have to have a knack for listening. I need to be able to hear what is being said to me by the voices I create.

I had lines inside me, a string of guiding lights. I had language. Fiction and poetry are doses, medicines. What they heal is the rupture reality makes on the imagination. I had been damaged, and a very important part of me had been destroyed - that was my reality, the facts of my life. But on the other side of the facts was who I could be, how I could feel. And as long as I had words for that, images for that, stories for that, then I wasn't lost.

In the library I felt better, words you could trust and look at till you understood them, they couldn't change half way through a sentence like people, so it was easier to spot a lie.

It may be that you are settled in another place it may be that you are happy but the one who took your heart wields final power.

Don't regret your life, child, it will pass soon enough.

I wanted to cause trouble, but I know now it stays with you.