There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.

A girl who is thirteen-which is hard, and difficult, and beautiful, and painful, and exhilarating.

I try really hard to ask people to take a look at their bookshelves. Are there female writers on it? Gay writers? Writers of color? There should be.

Grief is a curious thing, when it happens unexpectedly. It is a Band-Aid being ripped away, taking the top layer off a family. And the underbelly of a household is never pretty, ours no exception. There were times I stayed in my room for days on end with headphones on, if only so that I would not have to listen to my mother cry. There were the weeks that my father worked round-the-clock shifts, so that he wouldn't have to come home to a house that felt too big for us.

Any highway . . . they all take you to the same place, don't they?

Identification is not the same as knowing someone through and through.

Just so you know, when they say "Once upon a time” . . . they’re lying