But, you see I am a mother who has to live with grieving a child gone, while loving the child I have, and they’re both the same. I love them both, I just miss one.

“Stuck in her mouth was a single blade of green grass, her last effort to stave off dehydration, hypothermia, starvation, as if by swallowing that blade she could puke up death itself, like a hairball, and be well again.”

“Your parents will . . . find a cemetery, one close by, so your Mom can visit you every day; pick out a nice four by eight foot plot, maybe beside a tree, and buy the only piece of real estate you will ever own.”

“I spoke about achievement and beginnings, pausing and smiling as my voice reverberated. And I told God, privately, that I would saw off both of my legs and never take a sip of alcohol if only he would let me die somewhere other than up a holler in Lincoln County.”

“Choose a windy day and stand at any spot out in the country. Then (this part is important) turn your back to the wind. Open the box and toss the ashes into the air. For the first time in my well-planned life, let the wind take me where it may.”

“Good writing must be a constant oscillation between unselfconscious momentum and self-examination. You must look beyond your immediate impulse in order to avoid what’s easy, hackneyed, unexaminedly ideological, and what’s merely smooth and pleasant to the inner ear.”

Why write, when you can shout? Why write, when the situation needs much more urgent action? Why write when the swamp of words is filling faster than we can bail it out?

None of that is to say religion doesn’t explain the world I live in, doesn’t aid my living a good life, doesn’t provide me with a community. It does all of those things. It’s simply that I don’t need religion to do any of those things.

Sobriety isn’t boring or scary or awful. It’s medium. It’s a balance between the 3AM self-hatred, and the 6PM seduction. It’s safe and patient and readily available. I don’t have to plan it, or pay for it, or even long for it.

I have to assign meaning to the problem, and understand its implications before I can begin to imagine a solution. Design is a language that is greater than the sum of its visual parts. Design begins with words.

Without a relationship between your hands, eyes and your idea, you remove an element of humanity. You forget the shoes that scruff, fingers that leave smudge marks. The space will never remain stark and its users will all be imperfect.

“On a whim I google the origin of the word ‘geezer.’ The accepted opinion is that it derives from an obsolete cockney word guiser, meaning ‘one who walks around in a disguise.’ I believe the disguise must be brightly colored slacks, tucked-in polo shirt, white belt, and Velcro sneakers.”

One day he went to an orthodontist, paid in advance, and sent a note home to her parents suggesting they get her braces, all expenses paid. One day she showed up on the bus and beamed her sparkly new braces at him, and handed him a pie that her mother had made.

It’s safe to hate on Uber, because we know they are evil. The challenge is not tweeting something supportive when it happens at a company you hate. It’s how you react when it happens in a company that you’re invested in, to someone sitting right next to you.

“You are a decent-looking nice lady — there’s nothing wrong with your bait,” he declared. “Clearly, there’s something wrong with your hook.”