Don't waste the opportunity.
I might not remember how the sky looked on any given day. I do remember, though, what it was like to be a boy beneath a sky.
I suppose that when you're growing up, you're bound to reach an age when you feel buffeted by all the changes in your life, when either your mind begins outpacing your body or your body begins outpacing your mind and you're not quite in conversation with yourself anymore.
What I wanted was to write a memoir that was immersive rather than reflective, to resurrect a long-gone version of my own consciousness. I kept expecting that sooner or later the effort would come to seem like second nature to me, but it never did.
I was wholly invested in my friendships. I might have tested them sometimes, but only to reassure myself that they were permanent. A mistake, of course.
I don't think our lives actually unfold with morals attached to them, or meanings that are easily extracted, or jokes designed to generate sympathy. I wanted to do the opposite - to offer up a life whose meanings can only be perceived through a tangle of desires, confusions, and textural details.
I'm uncommonly slow to show my work to other people, and by the time I do I've usually exhausted myself so completely that all I really want is for someone to tell me that my efforts have added up to something - not one of my better qualities, I admit.
One should always think of what one is about; when one is learning, one should not think of play; and when one is at play, one should not think of learning.
Some people need flowers, some people need dandelions. It's medicine, it's what you need at that time in your life.
Nothing in this world is real
Personal purity isn’t really the issue. Not supporting animal abuse – and persuading others not to support it – is.