New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light.

Anyone who makes a life of what they love is a hero to me, and it's important for those people to be visible in every kind of life, every kind of love, every kind of work.

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'm always writing to a younger version of myself, or a young woman who is like I was. I want that girl to know that I really existed and that it all went down that way.

I see consensual S&M no differently than I see consensual anything: as beautiful, and never any one thing.

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.

I more seriously considered publishing it under a pseudonym than I considered publishing it as fiction. I think the decision to write it as nonfiction happened at the very outset of the process, because the overwhelming impetus for writing this book was to understand what the experience meant, and to override my own reductions and rationalizations, whatever story I had that was not true. It didn't sit well with me and I needed to answer that. That's sort of the reason I write everything.