The most important things are the hardest to say. They are the things you get ashamed of, because words diminish them.

But then fall comes, kicking summer out on its treacherous ass as it always does one day sometime after the midpoint of September, it stays awhile like an old friend that you have missed. It settles in the way an old friend will settle into your favorite chair and take out his pipe and light it and then fill the afternoon with stories of places he has been and things he has done since last he saw you.

Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right — as right as you can, anyway — it belongs to anyone who wants to read it. Or criticize it.

You can't polish a turd.

Crying was like pissing everything out on the ground.

If we don't have each other, we go crazy with loneliness. When we do, we go crazy with togetherness.

What if I fall?', Tim cried. Maerlyn laughed. 'Sooner or later, we all do.