There are times we just send out messages into the world and hope they are received with the intention they were sent, but we can’t always count on the attitude or the generosity of the recipient.

A great lesson: When someone tells you not to bother dreaming, they’re not on your side.

When else do we feel so free as when we invent? Is there any sensation as free as that?

This is the thing a writer does, we claim everything around us: the wind, the earth, the collapse of a wave in the ocean, the sting of salt on a wound. We claim it and redefine it and turn it into something new.

I didn’t tell them that I feared at every moment that this new kind of freedom would be taken away from me, that at any moment any of our freedom could be gone.

I was creative and I was curious and there was a propulsiveness to my life—I was completely engaged in forward motion—yet I had no specific direction.

I had been hiding myself, even though I was living a much more public existence.

I had decided to operate in service of my ideas.

My wings were clipped so intensely I could feel the blood dripping right off them.