“I began as a dramatist in the theater, so I’m always thinking about how a story moves, what it looks like, how to engage the senses.”

My mother was an avid readerShe loved books about romance.

But what Mom never told me is that along the way, you find sisters, and they find you. Girls are cool that way.

I don’t use a crap camera, I don’t eat junk, and I’m not going to a dance where the boys are bores.

Things that happen unwieldy. You cannot turn to her anymore, and it changes your life forever.

There are two kinds of people in this world.

The sterling moment of the present and the glorious future known only in our imaginations.

All you needed is what every girl needs, a good friend.

How dialogue sounds, what feels authentic and sounds real, what’s funny, how to build distinctive and original characters.

If you look around to find meaning in everything that happens you will end up disappointed.

A practical girl never pines; she takes action.

No one worries about you like your mother, and when she is gone, the world seems unsafe.

Book clubs are the best thing that has happened to the world of publishing.

I ask myself, If I knew all the answers, would it help? I lie awake and wonder why I don’t have parents and wonder what will become of my brother and me.

But a child’s joy is doubled for the mother, and the sound of her son’s laughter began to her heart.

No one knows you like the people you live with, and no one will take up your cause to the outside world quite like your blood relatives.

Someone to talk to, to share with, to run things by.

The situation began to change, revolutionary conditions was created…we simply wanted to change the regime.

I began to feel heard in that movement. But it was because my voice was resonating with other voices.

This poem began as an emulation of Siqueiros’s compositional style and, in the process, became an ekphrastic aubade about my old neighborhood.

When I realized they had me pegged as a foreign nobleman type I began to live the part, too.

Let’s not forget: This all began when you had eight- and nine-year-old children writing graffiti on walls.

Iran began a policy of expanding its revolution, of interfering with the affairs of its neighbors

Hardly socialism. In fact, it was a Republican plan to begin with.

While I was in school, I began working in the New Business department of an advertising firm, and very quickly I was responsible for roughly 70% of their business