“As writers, our loyalty is not to the question, ‘how did it really happen,’ which can limit and bind our storytelling.

Instead we must ask: How did it feel? What did it change in me? What echoes did it leave behind?”

“When you’re building something that’s going to require multiple iterations—a book, a longform essay, or some other larger body of work—the best gift you can give yourself is time.”

“Making is a form of participating in the world. It’s a way of being in relationship with what’s here, and what’s possible.”

“No matter the circumstances, I promise you: You are not difficult or broken or bad at being creative. You might just be a fern in need of some shade.”

“When you think, sense, use language, or process meaning differently than others, it’s easy to forget that your ways are objectively as valuable as the more normative ones.”

“The more my self-belief depends on an external, inflexible circumstance, the more anxiously I remain attached to it.”

“A healthy relationship to publishing and sharing our creative work doesn’t get to define our creative work entirely.”

“You are allowed to trade your economic frameworks for environmental ones."

“Sometimes, taking care of yourself is remembering that you can be creative in order to feel more like yourself, rather than waiting to feel more like yourself in order to be creative.”