Memoir implies the need to reveal something about yourself - to recount your life for educational purposes.

Rilke said that art can come only out of inner necessity. I write because I must. Or because I cannot not write.

I'm bright, but there are lots of bright writers and people everywhere. In no way, at no point do I think I'm better than them.

I end up writing something every day, since I develop six or seven things at the same time - soccer columns, this and that.

Your nightmares follow you like a shadow, forever.

It seemed that we loved each other better when there were large swaths of two continents between us. The daily work of love was often hard to perform at home.

There's a social and human necessity for some kind of continuity, but it's not axiomatic and not something you're born into; it's something you have to work at. And one of the ways to work at it - perhaps the best - is storytelling: telling stories about yourself to others, telling stories about yourself to yourself, telling stories about others to others.