“Like forearm veins, my interests spread in different directions and eventually led to the hands, to writing.”

“I’ve learned to fall like the BJJ player, to protect the body through controlling the distribution of force by slapping the mat with hands open. With hands open. Hands open. Open. O Pen.”

“In other words, I tasted a different drug. A drug called progress.”

“It’s cool when fashion recycles itself, it’s not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction.”

“To live meant feeding my former self to my current self.”

“My next fight would not be measured in rounds, but throughout a lifetime. It would sustain and fulfill me longer than anything in the cage could. My opponent, my fight, would be against the slipping aspects of American society.”

“Poets, like fighters, both reap the benefits of roadwork.”