I wanted to prepare for a life of sudden transformations, of enemies singing at you across the stage dressed in the costume of a lover. - Alexander Chee

Why is it so loud when you cry from grief? Because it must be loud enough for the missing one to hear, though it never can be. Loud enough to scale the sky and the backs of angels, or to fall through the earth to where they rest. And so it is sometimes when I sing that the notes come from me as if I believed I could reach them where they rest, they sure of a reunion I still cannot imagine or believe in except, sometimes, in song.

It's a strange time to teach someone to write stories. But I think it always is. This is just our strange time.

It’s much like writing an essay or including autobiographical content in fiction — to succeed, it requires an ability to be coldly impersonal about yourself and your state, so as not to cloud what is there with what you want to see.