"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 feel."

"Like forearm veins, my interests spread in different directions and eventually led to the hands, to writing."