While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

I felt, that night, on that stage, under that skull, incredibly close to everything in the universe, but also extremely alone. I wondered, for the first time in my life, if life was worth all the work it took to live. What exactly made it worth it? What's so horrible about being dead forever, and not feeling anything, and not even dreaming? What's so great about feeling and dreaming?

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

People hurt each other. That's what people do.

With writing, we have second chances.

She extended a hand that I didn't know how to take, so I broke its fingers with my silence.

Feeding my children is not like feeding myself: it matters more.