The strange amber twilight I’d lived with was gone, and in its place was some terrible new brightness. I’d gone from feeling lost in a dream to lost … - Alexander Chee

Destroying art is practice for destroying people.

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.

Speak to your dead. Write for your dead. Tell them a story. What are you doing with this life? Let them hold you accountable. Let them make you bolder or more modest or louder or more loving, whatever it is, but ask them in, listen, and then write. And when war comes — and make no mistake, it is already here — be sure you write for the living too. The ones you love, and the ones who are coming for your life. What will you give them when they get there?