Mom loved my brother more. Not that she didn't love me - I felt the wash of her love every day, pouring over me, but it was a different kind, siphoned from a different, and tamer, body of water. I was her darling daughter; Joseph was her it.

It is all about numbers. It is all about sequence. It's the mathematical logic of being alive. If everything kept to its normal progression, we would live with the sadness-cry and then walk-but what really breaks us cleanest are the losses that happen out of order.

Language is the ticket to plot and character, after all, because both are built out of language.

When language is treated beautifully and interestingly, it can feel good for the body: It's nourishing; it's rejuvenating.

As a writer you ask yourself to dream while awake.

You can ruin anything if you focus at it.

Many kids, it seemed, would find out that their parents were flawed, messed-up people later in life, and I didn't appreciate getting to know it all so strong and early.