“There’s something about the confluence of springtime and death that feels right: life ends and life starts up in an explosion of pink blossoms. I’ve got grief on one shoulder and gratitude on the other, writing a book while losing the person who was most convinced I should be writing books.”

“If your work has value to anyone, then it should have value for you, and you should be at the front of the line to receive that value, because you’re doing the work.”

“But in cooking an egg, Le Guin shows us the beauty of difficult things: the things we do not to survive, not because we must, but because we’re challengingly, gloriously alive.”

“But in her very last post, in a poem that she wrote a quarter of a century ago, Le Guin left us with what often seems like the only possible answer: ‘And I will honor only / my people, the powerless.’”

“I’ve added ice to my drinks, a way to quiet the burn. Only to learn that though flesh burns, bones don’t.”

“The concept of authenticity is much over-hyped these days, and it seems to me a sad state of affairs that it’s something we need to cultivate — as if being authentic is just another act.”

“No minority writer, no writer of color, can claim that he or she accomplished anything purely on their own merit. We all owe so much to the collective struggles and activists that preceded us…”

“And I’ve spent much of my life trying to free myself from Eco’s magic spell, even if it took me the better part of two novels to do so. But I’ve also come to realize that if Eco is a dead end, it’s one that’s still worth taking . . .”

“She was the witness to every word I wrote that day as well as every word I’ve written and the many I have failed to write for fourteen years.” — Author Elizabeth Marro on writing and grief after the death of her dog, Chloe.