Only hang around people that are positive and make you feel good. Anybody who doesn’t make you feel good kick them to the curb and the earlier you start in your life the better. The minute anybody makes you feel weird and non included or not supported, you know, either beat it or tell them to beat it.

People will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel.

Why do you smoke so damn fast? I asked. She looked at me and smiled widely and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachable elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on christmas morning and said “Y’all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die

It’s tough to associate creativity with mental illness because obviously if you’re very ill, it gets in the way. … But one of the theories now is that the terrible swings of the mental illness – of bipolar depression – you get these manic highs, these euphorias, where the ideas just pour out of you. And you need to write them down. That’s followed by this dismal low period when maybe you’re a better editor. Maybe it’s easier for you to focus and refine those epiphanies into a perfect form. … The thinking is maybe the correlation exists because the swings of mental illness echo the natural swings of the creative process.