That's how writing works, at least for me: even the stuff that doesn't work out gets funneled into the stuff that does work out.

What happens in the band room stays in the band room.

The darkest nights produce the brightest stars.

Imagining the future is a kind of nostalgia. (...) You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how awesome it will be, and imagining that future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present.

The town was paper, but the memories were not.

I found myself thinking about President William McKinley, the third American president to be assassinated. He lived for several days after he was shot, and towards the end, his wife started crying and screaming, "I want to go too! I want to go too!" And with his last measure of strength, McKinley turned to her and spoke his last words: "We are all going.

A desert blessing, an ocean curse.