"A man will turn over half a library to make one book."
-Samuel Johnson


Reading is absolutely essential if one is to write. I have never respected great literature more than I do now, in my constant struggle to get across what I mean, to stir up awe, admiration, dread, and anticipation in total strangers that will come across my words. 


Some of the most inspirational books I have read are:


White Oldeander, Janet Fitch 
The Book, Alan Watts
The Dew Breaker, Edwidge Danticant
The Road, Cormac McCarthy
The Book of Disquiet, Fernando Pessoa
My Sister's Keeper, Jodi Picoult
One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, Ken Kesey
The Glass Castle, Jeanette Walls
In The Time of the Butterflies, Julia Alvarez
The Time Paradox, Phillip Zimbardo
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand
The Cosmic Serpent, Jeremy Narby
The Fire in Fiction, Donald Mass 
Indecision, Benjamin Kunkel
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, Mark Haddon
Fahrenheit 451, Ray Bradbury
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
1984, George Orwell


Some of my favorite poets are:

E.E. Cummings
Emily Dickinson
Federico García Lorca
Walt Whitman
Pablo Neruda
Sylvia Plath