Time does nothing but hand you down shabbier and older things.

In the olden days, a memoir was something written by Churchill and people like that, because they had a grand experience and considered it useful for future generations. And then it became what it became - a public purging in which other people have the chance to judge you and then forgive you, perhaps learning something from your sorry example.

I gradually became aware that my interiority was inseparable from my exteriority, that the geography of my city was the geography of my soul.

The incessant perpetuation of collective fantasies makes people crave the truth and nothing but the truth - reality is the fastest American commodity.

I spotted a can in the corner whose red label read SADNESS. Was there so much of it they could can it and sell it? A bolt of pain went through my intestines before I realized that it was not SADNESS but SARDINES.

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

I tend to wait for true stories to mature into fiction. Most of my fiction grew out of a long-germinating real-life situation.