closer to the truth

and I didn’t get very long into my interview preparations to realize that I wasn’t only writing about a personal hero

Sometimes being too desperate for clarity can ironically push it away.

And even then, we don’t walk, we crack . That crack is the beginning of motion.

I never get exactly what I thought I came for. And that’s kind of the point.

It's to notice the moments when you naturally and effortlessly already do feel that way, then not to screw it up with overthinking.

“There are choices you make,” she said, “but the contradictions don’t go away. You just live with them.”

I tend to write to people who are, even when they’re at their happiest, there’s some kind of underpinning that might be a little bit pensive or sad.

They understood that repetition wasn't redundancy, but ritual! And each telling was both the same story and a completely new experience, shaped by the particular moment, the specific voices, the quality of attention brought to bear.

I was meant to wander. To dissolve. To hide. To build an inner life that sustains me when nothing else does. I was meant to arrive when the room had emptied and the music had stopped and the real ones remained.