There are many ways to drown, only the most obvious wave their arms as they're going under.

In my experience, whatever happens clings to us like barnacles on the hull of a ship, slowing us slightly, both uglifying and giving us texture. You can scrape all you want, you can, if you have money, hire someone else to scrape, but the barnacles will come back or at least leave a blemish on the steel.

Change is one of the only constants in Buddhism; as meditation became the way I breathed in the days, this became apparent.

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.

The attention one gets from being a poet isnt great.

In life you get one take, and it's perfect. It's strange, afterwards you might think I shouldn't have reacted that way, but that's the way you reacted. That's your take; that's all you get.

There is a physics to the world, which non-fiction has a contract to stand in awe of, otherwise it becomes completely self-centered and ego-driven, which is the death of a memoir.