To live in a city is to be forever flinching.

When God is a father, he is said to be elsewhere. When God is a mother, she is said to be everywhere.

A few nights later, I secretly hope that I might be a genius. Why else can no amount of sleeping pills fell my brain? But in the morning my daughter asks me what a cloud is and I cannot say.

These bits of poetry that stick to her like burrs.

The only love that feels like love is the doomed kind. (Fun fact.)

One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, Right. Now I understand how this is done.

For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.