You is kind. You is smart. You is important.
I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.
It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.
New York at night, from its bridges, is a miracle. When I first came to the city, it took all my fantasies and set them on fire, turned them into flickering constellations of light.
The frustration of being marginalized often gets misdirected at the most visible members of one's own community, because they are more accessible than the real agents of marginalization.
Abandonment by a lover won't kill us. But it awakens the parts of us that remember when it could.
I was in the fantasy. I was selling myself on the fantasy as I was doing it. It never occurred to me. I did take notes, but just because I am a writer. I've been a writer since I was five. You don't have any sort of outlandish, shocking, extraordinary, horrifying experience without writing it down, because I know and knew that you forget things. No matter how outrageous and amazing and extraordinary and seemingly unforgettable an experience is, it's kind of like a dream. It will erode inevitably, for me.
There's a certain point, when you're writing autobiographical stuff, where you don't want to misrepresent yourself. It would be dishonest.
We are seekers of the truth, but we do not embody the truth. And in humility, we should recognize that the same can be said about our most ardent foes.
The world can only seem a safe place when we feel safe inside.
I drew because words were too unpredictable. (5)