Life Ain't The Movies.

I Put On The Page A Third Look At What I've Seen In Life - The Reinvented Experience Of A Cross-eyed Working-class Lesbian, Addicted To Violence, Language And Hope, Who Has Made The Decision To Live, Is Determined To Live, On The Page And On The Street, For Me And Mine.

Change, When It Comes, Cracks Everything Open.

If I Could Have Found What I Needed At Thirteen, I Would Not Have Lost So Much Of My Life Chasing Vindication Or Death. Give Some Child, Some Thirteen-year Old, The Hope Of The Remade Life. Tell The Truth. Write The Story That You Were Always Afraid To Tell. I Swear To You There Is Magic In It.

... Suffering Does Not Ennoble. It Destroys. To Resist Destruction, Self-hatred, Or Lifelong Hopelessness, We Have To Throw Off The Conditioning Of Being Despised, The Fear Of Becoming The They That Is Talked About So Dismissively, To Refuse Lying Myths And Easy Moralities, To See Ourselves As Human, Flawed, And Extraordinary. All Of Us Extraordinary

...i Have Come To Make Distinctions Between What I Call The Academy And Literature, The Moral Equivalents Of Church And God. The Academy May Lie, But Literature Tries To Tell The Truth.