“When a person is lucky enough to live inside a story. to live inside an imaginary world, the pains of this world disappear. For as long as the story goes on, reality no longer exists.”

-Paul Auster
(from The Brooklyn Follies: A Novel)

As a child growing up in the ghettos of New York City, reading was often my way away from the world. That yellow donut billboard across the rooftops of White Plains Road. Tiny red insect in the tar. Somehow I got away, metaphysically at least. Away from the trains, buses, the grit, the dirt. Most of what people loved about the city, I partially saw as a cement cage. This is why I love the artistry of writing, of creating a world, a door for someone else to walk through or be pulled through. Painting pictures through words. The craft.