“The internet can be many things, of course. Too often it's a cesspool of distraction, a place we indulge in the modern sport of snark and schandenfrende, building the case for our own bigotries, where we mock and thereby dismiss the suggering of others.”

“Twas a sheep not a lamb that strayed awayIn the parable Jesus told,A grown-up sheep that strayed awayFrom the ninety and nine in the fold.And why for the sheep should we seekAnd earnestly hope and pray?Because there is danger when sheep go wrong;They lead the lambs astray.Lambs will follow the sheep, you know,Wherever the sheep may stray.When sheep go wrong, it won’t take longTil the lambs are as wrong as they.And so with the sheep we earnestly pleadFor the sake of the lambs today,For when sheep are lost, what a terrible costThe lambs will have to pay!”

“In the road of right and wrong, trust me and hold my hand. Let's walk into the cave none has ever strayed into, where nothing matters except us. With the light, you hold in your eyes, let me destroy all the darkness in there.”

“I knew that if I allowed fear to overtake me, my journey was doomed. Fear, to a great extent, is born of a story we tell ourselves, and so I chose to tell myself a different story from the one women are told. I decided I was safe. I was strong. I was brave. Nothing could vanquish me. Insisting on this story was a form of mind control, but for the most part, it worked. Every time I heard a sound of unknown origin or felt something horrible cohering in my imagination, I pushed it away. I simply did not let myself become afraid. Fear begets fear. Power begets Power. I willed myself to beget power. And it wasn't long before I actually wasn't afraid.”

“My whole life sort of ended when my mom died.”

“My mother's death put me in touch with my most savage self. As I've grown up and come to terms with her death and accepted it, the pieces of her that I keep don't exist materially.”

“The most fascinating thing to me about your letter is that buried beneath all the anxiety and sorrow and fear and self-loathing, there’s arrogance at its core. It presumes you should be successful at twenty-six, when really it takes most writers much longer to get there.”

“One of the things that happens a lot is you get to see how many times things happen, literal things happen and how they are completely metaphors for where you are. It’s like a mirror is being held up just about an inch to your face.”

“It was only when I rounded a bend and glimpsed the white peaks ahead that I doubled my abilities, only when I thought how far i had yet to go that i lost faith that I would get there”

“Write like a motherfucker.”

“The internet can be many things, of course. Too often it's a cesspool of distraction, a place we indulge in the modern sport of snark and schandenfrende, building the case for our own bigotries, where we mock and thereby dismiss the suggering of others.”