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One curious thing about growing up is that you don't only move forward in time; you move backwards as well, as pieces of your parents' and grandparents' lives come to you.

I feel, as an adult, I'm very similar to how I was as a pre-teen. Maybe it's a case of arrested development, but I feel like it's easy to slip back into those shoes, and I feel like if we were all magically transported back to our middle school years, we'd all act like we did in middle school.

Most people are fascinated by what I did as a teenager, but when I look back at my life, I don't think very much about those years. I was an opportunist and got away with things because I was very young, but I went to prison and came out and remade my life.

Parents are like shuttles on a loom. They join the threads of the past with threads of the future and leave their own bright patterns as they go.

When you grow up in an extended family, or in a stable neighborhood with two or three generations of families who live there, you feel seen. Not just the good things you've done, the stuff you put on your resume. You know they've seen you in your dark times, when you've messed up - but they're still there.

Children have a way of forcing you back into the present moment.

There is a point in every young person's life when you realize that the youth that you've progressed through and graduate to some sort of adulthood is equally as messed up as where you're going.

My parents divorced when I was 10, but when my father was there, he was trying to create almost like a little prison for me.

When you finally go back to your old home, you find it wasn't the old home you missed but your childhood.

As an adult, you think of yourself as being someone else when you're away from your family, but when you come back to your family, you suddenly find yourself back in the exact same role that you always had in your family as a child and as a teenager.