She learned the intricacy of loneliness: the horror of color, the roar of soundlessness and the menace of familiar objects lying still.

You have to be willing to think the unthinkable.

Wait, wait, wait, wait. Don't try to write through it, to force it. Many do, but that won't work. Just wait, it will come.

Movements toward freedom and the self-respect that comes from something other than what people think is their most important feature.

Tell us what it is to be a woman so that we may know what it is to be a man. What moves at the margin. What it is to have no home in this place. To be set adrift from the one you knew. What it is to live at the edge of towns that cannot bear your company.

Can't nothing heal without pain, you know.

the hopelessness that comes from knowing too little and feeling too much (so brittle, so dry he is in danger of the reverse: feeling nothing and knowing everything)