The most successful stories are the ones that tap into something higher than the self.

Myth can’t help but to look toward the lens
and wink. We’ve been boxed about the ears.

Saint Joan who knows my wants, my troubles, my self-doubts. You are my mother and my inspiration. Hear my prayers.

The little men come out of the hills. They eat your smallest strawberries.

We need to baby our inspirations. We need to carry them like robin’s eggs in the warmth of our hoodie pockets.

Though I was farther from home than I’d ever been before, I found that the landscape looked jarringly familiar.

Suppose a war made us strong.

Do you know the song “Alone Together” by Fall Out Boy? Probably. You’re a writer.

The words may be lost, but the brick survives. And the brick may be lost, but the mountain survives. For now.

I don’t know where to look or how to feel or whether to call someone for help. She is pitched forward, words spouting, blending with the water’s roar. Over and over and over – I HATE YOU! Under my breath, I join her in measured triplets – I hate you, I hate you, I hate you! – each word with its own beat, its own moment.

They say you should write what you know. Today I want to put in a word for writing what you don’t know.

If I could tell my younger self one thing, it would not be to take a different road, or even to turn back sooner. It would be to waste less time on shame.

In attempts to wage war with self-doubt, I’ve decided to make this the spring of now instead of later.

You never want your doctor to think you are normal, especially not if your doctor’s naked body has spent so many nights curled around yours like a question mark.

we’d jump into a pool of mosaic glass / our hair sleeked / wild as film sluiced from a reel

When I think back to the most meaningful moments I’ve experienced in the past year, they were all when I was taking the time to deeply engage with art, my community, or my surroundings.

The horrible rotten truth is fiction writers need to be good liars.

I molt and yet the feathers / never leave me. I, a wet bird, shake / off the soak.

Every summer, there was a blood-trail running from the bridge over the river to the shed in Danny’s backyard.

At a reading I attended last month, an essayist exploring the nature of holes mentioned that the philosophical term for what surrounds a hole is a host. A hole, of course, cannot exist without its host.