When you are instantly protective of someone, a sliver of a bond forms. I have always felt protective of other women. And I have always trusted them on impact and given them all I could. For while it is men who I crave and desire, who I would like to lie down next to and smell their skin and allow them within me in an intense and foreign way, it is

We learn from them, but also, they tell us we can. Without even knowing it. Enter here. Start here. Begin now. This is why it’s always important to be reading. This is why we must always chew on the words of others. It’s nutrition. Eat your dinner.

No one deserves anyone else’s bad day.

Having any success as an author is like getting a promotion, only they don’t hire anyone to replace you at your own job. I had to be a good writer and I had to be a good salesperson.

just wanted to be in a better place than I was when I wasn’t writing.

It was hard for me to imagine there being that kind of a memory already that old for my much-younger friend. But eventually we all have past lives.

But when I was at home, in that apartment, I lingered at my desk. I was still trying to figure out how to be a writer, even though I had a day job. And I didn’t know it then, but I needed light, I needed air, in order to make my work. After I moved out, I swore I would never live in a dark space again, and I never did.

An attraction to that which was absent. A sketch, an outline, never fully formed, but still, it existed as an idea. Filling in the imaginary blanks with information I did not have but found I could invent quite easily. A thing we do as writers. If we just give ourselves permission. But also, there was something about simply feeling the sense of the

I loved. I had lovers. I was loved by others. I knew it, that feeling. But I didn’t have true partners. I had collaborators. I had people I made shit with. I had people to talk to. I had people in my life who understood me as much as I could be understood. A few mentors. More substantial than romantic love, I had friendship. That I knew best of all