“I want to be clear about this. If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

“Writers don't write from experience, although many are hesitant to admit that they don't. ...If you wrote from experience, you'd get maybe one book, maybe three poems. Writers write from empathy.”

“- I don't want to be a writer so I can write about my life. I want to be a writer to escape from it. + Then you shouldn't be a writer.”

“If you want to become a better writer, you have to write. But you also have to read. One of the things I love to read about is the craft of writing — advice, tips, and techniques from other writers.”

“Books. The more I thought about how to stop and get myself back together as one sane, whole person, the more I thought about books. I thought about escape. Not running to escape but reading to escape. Cyril Connolly, twentieth-century writer and critic, wrote that “words are alive and literature becomes an escape, not from, but into living.” That was how I wanted to use books: as an escape back to life. I wanted to engulf myself in books and come up whole again.”

“What did it matter to me? Did I think that by making you rational about one thing, I could make you rational about everything? Maybe. Or maybe I just wanted to save you from your fears”