We are the ones who take this thing called music and line it up with this thing called time. We are the ticking, we are the pulsing, we are underneath every part of this moment. And by making the moment our own, we are rendering it timeless. There is no audience. There are no instruments. There are only bodies and thoughts and murmurs and looks. It's the concert rush to end all concert rushes, because this is what matters. When the heart races, this is what it's racing towards.

I'm liking that I can throw any kind of sentence at her without worrying it's too out there.

In a field, I am the absence of field. In a crowd, I am the absence of crowd. In a dream, I am the absence of dream. But I don't want to live as an absence. I move to keep things whole. Because sometimes I feel drunk on positivity. Sometimes I feel amazement at the tangle of words and lives, and I want to be a part of that tangle.

I thought about the bigger picture of my life, and about the people—and particularly the guys—I would encounter during my lifetime. How would I ever know when that moment was right, when expectation met anticipation and formed … connection?

The reward is in the risk.

Usually my characters, though young, tend to be street-wise.

There’s no such thing as ready,” she says. “There’s only willing.