I remember liking to write stories pretty early on. In fourth or fifth grade, they would give us the beginning of a story, and we were supposed to finish it. I remember liking that. But I didn't think about deciding to become a writer until high school at about the age of 16.

It took courage to let things fall apart so beautifully.

There's a kind of acting that goes on in my head when I'm writing a character where I put myself in their place.

It was morning by the clock but deepest nighttime in his body.

A changeableness, too, as if beneath my visible face there was another, having second thoughts.

-Who are you, anyway? -Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them.

The humming of my parents' voices from behind my bedroom wall, which throughout my childhood had filled me with a sense of security, had now become a source of anxiety and panic.