Yes, things happened to me - brutal things - but I'm not going to give them so much clout by dwelling on them, empowering them to haunt my heart years after the events transpired. And no good comes from that. These ghosts don't need us to help them stay alive. If we're after real deal healing, these ghosts must desiccate.

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.

I'm a very tactile learner, so I need analog index cards, moving them all about, trying out various sequences for the book's architecture.

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

It's important to write like your readers are brilliant.

I always feel that as the author, once I know what a character is ashamed of, then I can go about making her truthful on the page.

In my life the right question is simply this: What can I do to be happy today?