It's funny how three or four notes of anger can be struck at once, creating the perfect chord of fury.

I am neither religious nor superstitious, but there is something otherworldly about the space where two roads come together. The devil is said to set up shop there if you want to swap your soul for something more useful. If you believe that God can be bribed, it's also the hallowed ground to make sacrifices. In the literal sense, it's also a place to change direction, but once you've changed it, you're stuck until you come to another crossroads, and who knows how long that will be.

Adolescence is a modern construct and very American in so many ways.

I take mentoring very seriously and as a result I hardly get any work done during the school year.

I guess this is how love is when it comes undone. No matter how tight you knit the stitches, a sharp tug on a loose thread will transform your warm sweater into a mangled heap of yarn that you can't reuse or repair.

When it comes to memoir, we want to catch the author in a lie. When we read fiction, we want to catch the author telling the truth.

This is what I have come to know: Our past is never passed and there is no such thing as moving on. But there is this telling and there is such a thing as passing through.