I pointed to the wound. "It's missing," I said. My grandmother smiled, and that was all it took for me to stop seeing the scar, and to recognize her again. "Yes," she said. "But see how much of me is left?

This was the reason there was music, he realized. There were some feelings that didn't have words big enough to describe them.

When you want something bad, you'll tell yourself a thousand lies.

You signed no contract to become a parent, but the responsibilities were written in invisible ink. There was a point when you had to support your child, even if no one else would. It was your job to rebuild the bridge, even if your child was the one who burned it in the first place.

I think grief is like a really ugly couch. It never goes away. You can decorate around it; you can slap a doily on top of it; you can push it to the corner of the room-but eventually, you learn to live with it.

I don't know what I was thinking, coming out here. There are no silver bullets in life, there's just the long, messy climb out of the pit you've dug youself.

Read a ton. Take a workshop course so you learn to give and get criticism.