"Most of the writers I know are weird hybrids. There’s a strong streak of egomania coupled with extreme shyness. Writing’s kind of like exhibitionism in private. And there’s also a strange loneliness, and a desire to have some kind of conversation with people, but not a real great ability to do it in person."
"Fundamentally, I started writing to save my life. Yes, my own life first. I see the same impulse in my students—the dark, the queer, the mixed-blood, the violated—turning to the written page with a relentless passion, a drive to avenge their own silence, invisibility, and erasure as living, innately expressive human beings."
"Your heart is like a great river after a long spell of rain, spilling over its banks. All signposts that once stood on the ground are gone, inundated and carried away by that rush of water. And still the rain beats down on the surface of the river. Every time you see a flood like that on the news you tell yourself: That’s it. That’s my heart."
"When people are ready to, they change. They never do it before then, and sometimes they die before they get around to it. You can’t make them change if they don’t want to, just like when they do want to, you can’t stop them."
(Source: animalstalkinginallcaps)
