I've managed to create intimacy with people I know, and people that I don't know. The longer things stay inside of us, the more we think they are black or tainted, but they're really not.

There was always some germ of joy, some little paramecium of happiness wriggling around, waiting for a chance to get out.

There are still things out there in the universe to contemplate and spend our lives chasing.

The minute I landed back in Alaska, it was back to hip boots and fish guts. This cultural flipping wasn't easy - especially on top of the post-divorce fighting that was still going on between my parents. But this is why you don't write a memoir at age fourteen.

If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved.

I'm pretty much of the Shakespearean school. Dialogue is character. How we speak is who we are.

Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy-and time. The more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half hells, the quicker you'll start feeling those minute-and-a-half happinesses.