My mother is from Cairo, Georgia. This makes everything she says sound like it went through a curling iron. Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.
You would be amazed by what you can give up, lose, or break, and yet still be a person who gets happy over brownies.
I wouldn’t want to waste any of my brain cells on forgiving if it’s holding me back.
You must never allow something that happened to you to become a morbidly treasured heirloom that you carry, show people, put back in its black velvet pouch and then tuck back into your jacket where you can keep it close to your heart.
You are allowed to be alive. You are allowed to be somebody different. You are allowed to not say goodbye to anybody or explain a single thing to anyone, ever.
There is nothing about MYSELF that I wouldn’t reveal or write about. I don’t care how horrendous or ridiculous I may appear in person or in print. There is great freedom in not caring what other people think.
I could write another collection of personal essays from what has happened to me in the last year alone. I don’t seek out my material – it finds me. I am magnetic, somehow.
Smoking had become my favorite thing in the world to do. It was like having instant comfort, no matter where or when.
There is no shame in being hungry for another person. There is no shame in wanting very much to share your life with somebody.
I don’t have a fixed routine. I write every day but I don’t “write” every day, if that makes any sense. In other words, I email with my friends constantly and sometimes I’ll pull out something I’ve written and save it.
Nothing made sense to me anymore. I knew I was young, I knew I was small. But I was worried that I might already be ruined.
And of course, the answer came to me in the same way Jesus comes to those who drink in trailers: as an epiphany.
I think I love him, but I also think that you can love people who aren’t good for you.
Because here is the truth: If you want to have a chance at meeting somebody with whom you are genuinely compatible, never put your best foot forward.
The truth is that nobody is owed an apology for anything. Apologies are lovely when they happen. But they change nothing. They do not reverse actions or correct damage. They are merely nice to hear.
You manufacture beauty with your mind.
It terrified me to consider: What if, as a grown-up, I craved another body beside me as still as this one? What then?
The most valuable moments and experiences that life has to offer are found only along its most treacherous paths.
Long marriages have ended in ruin over tiny and insignificant grievances that were never properly aired and instead grew into a brittle barnacle of hatred.
It’s weird – sort of not terribly wise – to take a book that was successful and then change its cover.