Sometimes things just fall out of your head on the paper, and if you’re smart, you learn not to touch them.

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March……….I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world…I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living...

A little kid asks my dad why that man is chopping down the tree.Dad: He’s not chopping it down. He’s saving it. Those branches were long dead from disease. All plants are like that. By...

Could he hear my heart pounding?

It’s bad timing, but a lot of kids become teenagers just as their parents are hitting their mid-life crisis. So everybody’s miserable and confused and seeking that new sense of identity.

No. Absolutely not. I forbid it. You’ll have nightmares.” “She was my friend! You must allow me. Why are you so horrid?” As soon as the angry words were out of my mouth, I knew...

I watch the Eruptions. Mount Dad, long dormant, now considered armed and dangerous. Mount Saint Mom, oozing lava, spitting flame. Warn the villagers to run into the sea.

I need a new friend. I need a friend, period. Not a true friend, nothing close or share clothes or sleepover giggle giggle yak yak. Just a pseudo-friend, disposable friend. Friend as accessory. Just so...

I’ve written in every imaginable location; a repurposed closet, the kitchen table, the bleachers while my kids had basketball practice, the front seat of the car when they were at soccer. In airports. On trains....

And that’s the problem. When you’realive, people can hurt you. It’s easier to crawl into a bonecage or a snowdrift of confusion. It’s easier to lock everybodyout.But it’s a lie.

Art without emotion its like chocolate cake without sugar. It makes you gag.

I could never hate you, even if I wanted to.

We’re good at taking care of little kids, and spend a lot of energy teaching them things like how to read. But when kids get as tall as their parents and can look them in...

I am angry that I starved my brain and that I sat shivering in my bed at night instead of dancing or reading poetry or eating ice cream or kissing a boy…

Why are you being so mean?””Friends tell friends the truth.””yeah, but not to hurt, to help.

The world is crazy. You need a license to drive a car and go fishing. You don’t need a license to start a family. Two people have sex and BAM! Perfectly innocent kid is born...

I wish America would stop judging and criticizing teens and instead, try to understand the battles they have to fight every day.

You have to know what you stand for, not just what you stand against.

She turns to us, acts surprised to see us, then does the bit with the back of the hand to the forehead. “You’re lost!” “You’re angry!” “You’re in the wrong school!” “You’re in the wrong...

Yeah, but not to hurt. To help.

This is my one beef with Hollywood: It’s great for movie sales, but they’ve created this fiction for us that, when you have a hard thing in your life, it’s going to get fixed, and...

It’s easier to floss with barbed wire than admit you like someone in middle school.

This is wonderful, wonderful! Be the bird. You are the bird. Sacrifice yourself to abandoned family values….

Love messes you up and makes you do strange things

I think maybe I might have to do what some other authors do, which is do a variation on my name, just to send readers the message that, ‘Yep, this is me, but this is...

I’m learning how to taste everything.

When people don’t express themselves, they die one piece at a time.

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above...

I’m finally watching ‘Mad Men.’ As a child of the ’60s, I can’t believe how old everything looks! I am the age of baby Eugene.

In one aspect, yes, I believe in ghosts, but we create them. We haunt ourselves.

Nicole can do anything that involves a ball and whistle.

The gloaming that closed over us the cemetery had crawled inside his skin.

We’ve fallen down on our responsibility to our children by somehow creating this world where they’re surrounded by images of sexuality; and yet, we as adults struggle to talk to kids honestly about sex, the...

My English teacher has no face. She has uncombed stringy hair that droops on her shoulders. The hair is black from her part to her ears and then neon orange to the frizzy ends. I...

Me: “All right, but you said we had to put emotion into our art. I don’t know what that means. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel.

There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn’t matter anymore.

IT happened. There is no avoiding it, no forgetting. No running away, or flying, or burying, or hiding.

I hate winter. I’ve lived in Syracuse my whole life and I hate winter. It starts too early and ends too late. No one likes it.

I have survived. I am here. Confused, screwed up, but here. So, how can I find my way? Is there a chain saw of the soul, an ax I can take to my memories or...

I have to go. Boss hasthis weird idea that I should actually work while he’s payingme.

Some adults would rather pretend that bad things don’t exist than to talk about them.

The same boys who got detention in elementary school for beating the crap out of people are now rewarded for it. They call it football.

In one universe, they are gorgeous, straight-teethed, long-legged, wrapped in designer fashions, and given sports cars on their sixteenth birthdays. Teacher smile at them and grade them on the curve. They know the first names...

Until then we’re going to keep making memories like this, moments when we’re the only two people in the whole world. And when we get scared or lonely or confused, we’ll pull out these memories...

That can be the most painstaking aspect of being a teen, figuring out what the world really looks like. If you find someone in a book, you know you’re not alone and that’s what’s so...

They mean hot like ‘I’m too good for you I got my own money don’t be frontin’ me.’ You’re more like ‘Be my boyfriend I’ll make you cookies come meet my dad ‘ know what...

Picasso.” He whispers like a priest. “Picasso. Who saw the truth. Who painted the truth, moulded it, ripped from the earth with two angry hands.

I am beginning to measure myself in strength, not pounds. Sometimes in smiles.

Grandma frowned and yelled something in Russian. She could have been saying, ‘Open up, your best friend is here.’ On the other hand, it could have been, ‘America is a great country because of canned...

I spent the last Friday of summer vacation spreading hot, sticky tar across the roof of George Washington High. My companions were Dopey, Toothless, and Joe, the brain surgeons in charge of building maintenance. At...