Different genres allow me to not feel so hemmed in by my own voice, tics, style.

Omission is a sin only if, in the process of deceiving, you forget the truth. Lying is a sin only if, in the process, the lie becomes the only truth.

Each genre has something to teach me about the others. Not all the lessons are transferable, but many of the most important ones are.

I didn't start writing so that I could more deeply know myself. I was bored of myself, my life, my childhood, my hometown. I started writing as a way to know others, to get away from myself.

She glances back before stepping into the alley, and she catches her grandfather looking at her the way he does sometimes--as if she's already gone, as if he's practicing sorrow.

Weakness, like not being able to bury the past. Weakness, like not giving up hope when you know you should.

Sometimes when reading aloud to my husband, I'll start crying. It completely stuns me. As if the words in my body and on the page - in relation to each other - are cocooned against my own feelings about what I'm writing until they're loosed in the air and become their own. Then I realize what I may or may not have done.