The translucence that comes when life hardens into a bead of such cruel perfection you see it with the purest clarity. Everything suddenly there--life as it truly is, enormous, appalling, devastating. You see the great sinkholes it makes in people and the harrowing lengths to which love will go to fill them.

You can't stop your heart from loving, really -- it's like standing out there in the ocean yelling at the waves to stop.

It was the in-between time, before day leaves and night comes, a time I’ve never been partial to because of the sadness that lingers in the space between going and coming.

After you get stung, you can't get unstung no matter how much you whine about it.

Where do you come from?"...This is the number one most-asked question in all of South Carolina. We want to know if you are one of us, if your cousin knows our cousin, if your little sister went to school with our big brother, if you go to the same Baptist church as our ex-boss. We are looking for ways our stories fit together.

Sometimes, in order to say yes to what matters most, I must say no to good things.

It's your time to live, don't mess it up.