Religion isn't in your DNA. you don't believe just because your parents believe.

when you [lose someone], it feels like the hole in your gum when a tooth falls out. You can chew, you can eat, you have plenty of other teeth, but your tongue keeps going back to that empty place, where all nerves are still a little raw

Each memory is like a paper flower stowed up a magician's sleeve: invisible one moment and then so substantial and florid the next I cannot imagine how it stayed hidden all this time. And like those paper flowers, once they've been let loose in the world, the memories are impossible to tuck away again.

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

Life is not a plot; it's in the details.

Bad is not an absolute, but a relative term. Ask the robber who used the cash he stole to feed his infant; the rapist who was sexually abused as a child; the kidnapper who truly believed he was saving a life. And just because you break the law doesn't mean you have intentionally crossed the line into evil. Sometimes the line creeps up on you, and before you know it, you're standing on the other side.

It's like picking up an unfamiliar piece of sheet music & starting to stumble through it, only to realize it is a melody you'd once learned by heart, one you can play without even trying.