The frustration of being marginalized often gets misdirected at the most visible members of one's own community, because they are more accessible than the real agents of marginalization.

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.

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.

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.

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

I've always looked very closely at people, and seen a lot; that was true even when I was a kid. That's what made me a good domme, but it's also what makes me well suited to being a writer, and a teacher.

Our lives are a long series of acquiring and then sloughing narratives.