Once you figure out what's best for the story, take out the rest.

If you're gonna do something weird, just have one thing be weird.

It's funny, for a long time I would go watermelon-red and deny that I was a magical realist. It felt imprecise to me, a misrepresentation.

My backyard was replete with madness, it just grew indigenously in South Florida.

When I was younger I used to lock myself in the bathroom and read in the dry tub. I was also a fan of the 'shoe closet.' Reading felt thrilling and illicit and deeply private to me, and I felt vulnerable doing it in public.

I think that's the real horror story for me, how little you can ever really know about your own motivations. How in the dark we all are about the concerns and the contents of our minds.

Hopes were wallflowers. Hopes hugged the perimeter of a dance floor in your brain, tugging at their party lace, all perfume and hems and doomed expectation. They fanned their dance cards, these guests that pressed against the walls of your heart.