In water, like in books—you can leave your life.

We live through sound and light—through our technologies.

The maternal impulse in animals to protect their young - that kind of instinct and subsequent violence is quite beautiful. Mythic even.

These words "accessible" and "emotionally available" get thrown at us from agents and editors and publishers - or the reverse - if it's not all goo-ey and sentimental we're told it's "cold" or "uncaring" or "emotionally vacant." In other words, responses to women's writing in particular continue to be "gendered."

Because rage and violence are human emotions and drives and capacities that inhabit us all. SEE CARL JUNG. Or that hipster Joseph Campbell. Because we all take archetypal journeys in a million ways - literal, symbolic, you name it - that figure, disfigure, and refigure violence.

We can't handle violence in women characters but we CAN handle what's done to women in our present tense every second of the day worldwide? Or next door? Or in political or medical discourse? Please. That idea just makes me want to crap on a table at a very fancy restaurant.

Laughter can shake you from the delirium of grief