I want to talk to him. I want to ask him about that girl and if he loved her and still misses her.

You'll have days of complete lack of faith in your abilities. But you have to keep coming back. That's when you know you're a writer - when you take the failures and appear at the desk again, over and over again.

We both laugh and run and the moment is so thick around me that i feel like dropping into it to let it carry me.

Make sure you live,' she said. 'As decent as you can. I know you'll make mistakes, but sometimes you're meant to, okay?

...there would be punishment and pain, and there would be happiness, too. That was writing.

Trust was accumulated quickly, due primarily to the brute strength of the man's gentleness, his thereness. (p.36)

Five hundred souls. I carried them in my fingers, like suitcases. Or I'd throw them over my shoulder. It was only the the children I carried in my arms.