Sometimes love can be an ugly thing.

Every book teaches me something about my process, and they are all challenging in one way or another.

All I'd ever wanted was to forget. but even when I thought I had, pieces had kept emerging, like bits of wood floating up to the surface that only hint at the shipwreck below.

It was like those songs I'd heard as a child, each so familiar, and all mine. When i got older and realized the words were sad, the stories tragic, it didn't make me love them any less. By then they were already part of me, woven into my conciousness & memory

You didn't have to take a punch for me, you know,' he said. 'I'm a lover, not a fighter.' 'You're a freak is what you are,' I said. He stuck out his hand. 'Come on, slugger. Walk with me. You know you want to.' And the thing was, despite everything I knew-that it was a mistake, that he was different from the others-I did. How he knew that, I had no idea. But I got up and did it anyway.

You're not supposed to have it all figured out in high school. If you knew it all, and it was the best, it's all downhill from there.

Because maybe, the best of times were yet to come. You never knew.