"The words he said, too, must be human enough to bleed."
- Cameron Conaway
"A poet could kill the dead."
"Poets, like fighters, both reap the benefits of roadwork."
"I’ve learned to fall like the BJJ player, to protect the body through controlling the distribution of force by slapping the mat with hands open. With hands open. Hands open. Open. O Pen."
"Stories do not change, only the lives they live in do."
"Fighting and writing’s deepest layers of beauty lie not only in the physical and mental realms of what we know, but also as an incognizable instinct, a realm we will never fully know but will forever ..."
"Like forearm veins, my interests spread in different directions and eventually led to the hands, to writing."
"If pain is a pot of boiling water, humor can be the rising steam."
"We give up our backs and allow religious myths to apply the rear naked choke to our minds."
"It’s cool when fashion recycles itself, it’s not cool when sustainable living does because it means there was (and is as I write) a period of absolute and possibly irreversible destruction."