My job as the novelist is to present the whole case, then the reader gets to render her verdict.

My tunnel vision allows me to have a longer work day than most writers. I'm thankful for that.

I just thought it was important that people knew right from the jump that I've got problems. But in all seriousness, that's a huge part of my writing process.

I'm a semi-failed writer, but I'm a capital-F Failed musician.

It's a beautiful aspect of narrative construction, hunting for the right images and metaphors to render our character's hearts/minds/souls as though they're ecosystems, full-fledged settings for a reader to inhabit like a place.

I never wanted/expected to write a memoir, but this life thing, it has a way of sideswiping our worlds, scaring us so thoroughly that our past lenses of contextualizing events don't work - they cease to matter.

It takes a lot of time to be a good junkie or alcoholic - you spend hours getting the necessary supplies, then imbibing, then recovering, rinse and repeat. That's like eighteen hours of a day. And assuming you get out of that lifestyle before it macerates your heart, you have that Junkie Tunnel Vision, except now you get to use it for something positive: you know how to work tirelessly for one thing. Instead of using that tunnel vision to get high, I use it to make art.