I will not be tortured, I tear torture out of myself by torturing you!
Over and over again, I'm trying to express or communicate these big and small struggles to the world, and really to myself.
Grief and memory go together. After someone dies, that's what you're left with. And the memories are so slippery yet so rich.
We never did things as we were supposed to do. That was part of our ethic. We did what felt right to us, not what someone told us we should do.
I would hate to think I'm promoting sadness as an aesthetic. But I grew up in not just a family but a town and a culture where sadness is something you're taught to feel shame about. You end up chronically desiring what can be a very sentimental idea of love and connection. A lot of my work has been about trying to make a space for sadness.
My dad's gay experiences really had a very positive influence on me and my straight relationships - how to better accept all the weirdness and ambiguity and ups and downs and paradoxes. I knew from the beginning I was writing about love.
The littlest thing can have the strongest connection when you're grieving. Your Proustian, poetic nerve is turned up to ten.
You will not be satisfied unless you are contributing something to or for the benefit of others.
Life consists not in holding good cards but in playing those you hold well.
The sneak-peeks you get off the top are of them in their real life. You're more invested, you know both of them, and you've already made assumptions. A murder who would murders someone - that makes them immediately bad - but here you see them in a different.
The Pentagon as a legitimate target? I actually don't have an opinion on that and it's important I not have an opinion on that as I sit here in my capacity right now.