She had a woman’s swagger at twelve-and-a-half. Hair: strawberry-blonde, and I vaguely recall a daisy in the crook of her ear. She was an inch taller than me, two with the ponytail; smooth cheeks and...

We can change in one day. We can fall in love in one day. Anything can happen in one day.

When a child first catches adults out — when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true,...

I just want your voice aimed at me again. I want to absorb the direction of your eyes…

The next thing Jordana says makes me realize that it’s too late to save her. “I’ve noticed that when you light a match, the flame is the same shape as a falling tear.” She’s been...

This is what I know about my parents. They spent the next several years trying to forget each other, and me.

We screamed this primeval scream built on a base of freedom, raised from beauty of a dying breed, and threw our heads back to laugh or cry, I’m not entirely sure which. But the scream...

Sometimes milestones are not measured by the accomplishments of society, but by those of integrity.

I journeyed alone for almost ten years before I found home. Adoptions are like very delicate gardening with transplants and grafts. Mine took hold, rooted, and bloomed, even though there were inevitable adjustments to the...

To be honest, I’ve always made films and I never really stopped, starting with little stop-motion experiments using my dad’s Super 8 camera. In my mind, it’s all one big continuum of filmmaking and I’ve...

when we grow up”. Some are already at that stage early on, some are not. We learn the ways of the world all in good time, but being vulnerable is to be human. We never...

Dear God, please help me to be the kind of person who my dogs think I am.

What in the world could this family have done to deserve a fate such as this?

Your personal truth is your gift to the world.

But I love you and I want you and I need you. Can’t you see that? This world has nothing to offer me if it doesn’t include you.

Boys always make things more complicated.

Probably not, but we can pretend.

At least I rescued your poor hot dog.

You only go through High School once, but if you go through the way we did, that’s enough.

Children’s and YA books are about being brave and kind, about learning wisdom and love, about that journey into and through maturity that we all keep starting, and starting again, no matter how old we...

I don’t know if this happens in all relationships, but I just got so sick of his all too familiar stories. I had heard these stories so many times that I could have recited them...

I have really sinned. I am going to pause now, and sit here on the mound repenting in deepest shame…

Time collapsed into a delicate dark pencil brushed against oureyebrows, the emergent rumble of crowds gathering above our heads. Weslid into our costumes. Pirate, outlaw, futuristic rebels. Red,purple, gold. Chains hanging from our belts, tight...

But like all moments trapped in time, that moment would end and Joey Boldt, as all the greats before him did, would begin to understand that clinging too tightly to anything results in Time and...

I’ve always seen this in you, ever since you were a little girl — this hunger to love other people into their highest selves and it’s what has made me irreversibly and just so forever...

I don’t ever want to hurt anyone, but I really wish there was something like a reset button on my life.

But sometimes the scars go too deep and the stories are too personal to share.

The combination of razor-sharp wit (completely real) and his credentials (completely fake) had won them over in the end.

I’d wrestled against the inner voice of my mother, the voice of caution, of duty, of fear of the unknown, the voice that said the world was dangerous and safety was always the first measure...

There’s something to say about inspiration – when it comes into your life…the feeling is insatiable.

And the One will win the Armor of the Easter Dawn and defeat the enemy with audacity and wisdom. The body of the One is strong and ready to lead. Lammasu will pounce

in the know” assured me that they were beautiful.

It was a sacrifice worthy of her and dreams are made to be killed.

The music is happy; the laughter is happy. Everything feels ecstatic and desperate. Blurrily, I think of sex, and I think of death. I realize: Every moment of joyous celebration contains the seed of death.

I want you to trust yourself, baby. Love is all that matters and you’ve always known that. You’ve known, since you were a very little girl, what your life is meant to be about…

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.

We aren’t encouraged to think for ourselves and ask questions. We are expected to accept what they teach us as infallible truths.

This city is yawning before me, but I’m not tired.

In my early teens, I heard about Naked Lunch and its mutating typewriters and talking cockroaches. While I would hardly classify its dystopic vision as erotica now, at the time, Naked Lunch was my first...

I wonder if he’d been as beautiful as Dante. And I wondered why I thought that.

But I can’t manage to grow up and change shape. I’m still tiny, and staying that way, perhaps because I know the secret that everyone pretends to be unaware of, perhaps because I know that...

I’m looking to make a miracle

Fuck Kerouac; he would write his own story.

When you find the one, when you share the spark of kismet, then it becomes inconceivable to walk through life with anyone else.

Don’t worry if people think you’re crazy. You are crazy. You have that kind of intoxicating insanity that lets other people dream outside of the lines and become who they’re destined to be.

Time’ is the most threatening four letter word.

The more I learn about life and people, the more I realise that everyone has a story and everyone’s story is the biggest in their own mind.” – Laylla Jonson

I noticed him right away. No, it wasn’t his lean, rugged face. Or the dark waves of shiny hair that hung just a little too long on his forehead. It wasn’t the slim, collarless biker...

Little Joe was still behind him. Eli could feel it. He wanted to look back, but he couldn’t. The tears were too close. If he were Fancy, he’d turn around and kick and buck and...

I just want to this about that.