I always wished I could go to confession. I was so full of things I couldn't name and had an instinct to hide. I felt burdened by the loneliness of my interior life. I wanted some container that I could empty myself into, some ear that would never be shocked, even if it offered me some kind of penance.

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.

Most of the smart things I've ever thought or written came vis-a-vis my body.

You don't know how people are going to respond. But I would add to that, that getting your heart broken is not the worst thing and it's actually quite unavoidable. I think in some ways I had to break my father's heart and then face that in order to have a real relationship with him.

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

I tell my students all the time is, for better or worse, no publisher is going to come wrench your story out of your hands before you're ready to let it go. You will have time to take stuff out. You don't have to show it to anybody. That's what I did.

I never think about anything in my brain. I think in very small repetitive circles inside my own brain. That's why I'm a writer. It's the only way I get any sort of conclusion or understanding about anything.