When you deal with nonfiction you deal with human characters.

Falling in love happens so suddenly that it seems, all at once, that you have always been in love.

I know how this feels: the tightening of the chest, the panic, the what-have-I-done-wait-I-was-kidding. Eating disorders linger so long undetected, eroding the body in silence, and then they strike. The secret is out. You're dying.

When I returned, everything was different. Everything was calm, and I felt very clean. Everything was in order. Everything was as it should be. I had a secret. It was a guilty secret, certainly. But it was MY secret. I had something to hold on to. It was company. It kept me calm. It filled me up and emptied me out.

You can't teach an ear, you can't teach talent, but you can teach people who have those things not to just fly by the seat of their pants.

The biggest fear of my life is living. My second biggest fear is dying.

We turn skeletons into goddesses and look to them as if they might teach us how not to need.