You can turn off the song the way you cannot the actual experience.

I have replaced my instinct for secrecy with an instinct for confession.

A lot of the experiences I write about could be described as grasping for boundaries, trying to find the limits of things.

You don't have to write like David Foster Wallace or James Baldwin or Maggie Nelson - indeed, you shouldn't. Those writers are doing it better than you ever could.

Abandonment by a lover won't kill us. But it awakens the parts of us that remember when it could.

Because of the irresistible nature of our own Imagos, I think the replication of it in music is a siren song - we love those tormented songs, and we listen to them over and over and over the way that we smash ourselves into our lovers, or the same kind of lover, over and over. That drive is tireless, until it is resolved. And we can "enjoy" it safely through music, which is a simulacrum we have power over.

Being celibate was so wonderful. It taught me a lot about love, but even more about my own self outside of love. I'd never met myself out of love before, really.