Read as much as you can. Write only when you feel the inner need to do so. And don’t ever rush into print.

If you're going to write about someone's life, you don't just use them for wallpaper. You have to honor and respect that life.

Water can be a symbol of purification, to stand naked before someone a sign of truth, of nothing to hide. - Nick Flynn

inside us, a flower taken whole, a field built inside.

Who doesn't want to just disappear, at some point in the day, in a year, to just step off the map and float?

Sometimes I'd see my father, walking past my building on his way to another nowhere. I could have given him a key, offered a piece of my floor. A futon. A bed. But I never did. If I let him inside I would become him, the line between us would blur, my own slow-motion car wreck would speed up. The slogan on the side of a moving company truck read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING PLACES--modified by a vandal or a disgruntled employee to read TOGETHER WE ARE GOING DOWN. If I went to the drowning man the drowning man would pull me under. I couldn't be his life raft.

When I was a child, writing was the worst possible choice of a career in my family.