She was smart and funny and vulnerable and just so goddamned beautiful, the kind of beautiful that was worth being shot down over.

Love made us partners in narcissism, and we talked ceaselessly about how close we were, how perfect our connection was, like we were the first people in history to ever get it exactly right.

Novel writing, to me, is all about language: choosing your words, finding the characters within the words and just really agonizing over every word. It's really crafting this whole piece from nothing.

I loved her for the way she embraced the unknown, how she opened herself up to every experience. When I was with her, she opened me up, too, stirred my passion and heightened my every sensation. Which was great, until she left me and all my heightened senses to deal with the heartache of losing her.

But the muse won’t always cooperate and she will never be coerced. Sometimes she’d rather take a nap or see a mid-afternoon movie.

Things have been a mess for so many years that trying to pin down a starting point is like trying to figure out where your skin starts.

What it must feel like, I thought, to look at something, anything really, and know that it’s for the last time?