You still like it, you’re still glad you wrote it, but it’s not worth going to the mat over. You click, “Accept Change,” and it’s gone.

All my fear, shame, and pain are a consequence of mistaking stories for reality.

For a moment, reality felt off kilter because I depended on what I liked or didn’t like to guide me not just across a radio dial but also through life itself.

I could learn more about someone in two minutes of conversation than from watching hours of interviews or reading hundreds of pages of the their memoir.

You will never be more original and inspired and productive than when you give something your complete attention.

When a story meets a reader I can’t be there to shepherd this new relationship through to a happy conclusion.

Your readers will return mostly for your perspective. It may be that you and they share an interest like baseball or poetry or pop culture, and it is this shared interest that first brings you together – but it is your perspective on those subjects that brings them back.

When the word I want but don’t yet know isn’t coming it means I’m not seeing what I’m trying to write accurately.

The thing about sentences is that they are almost always connected to other sentences, growing out of and into what came before and what will come after. It is the rare sentence that can stand entirely alone, as satisfying as a poem.

It was exhausting trying to assess oneself through the lens of other people.