Once released from life, having lost it in such violence, I couldn’t calculate my steps. I didn’t have time for contemplation. In violence it is the getting out that you concentrate on. When you begin to go over the edge, life receding from you as a boat recedes inevitably from the shore, you hold on to death tightly, like a rope that will transport you, and you swing out on it, hoping to land away from where you are.

If I shut my eyes, I believed, I would disappear. To make it through, I had to be present the whole time.

I think you only learn what kind of personality you have by committing to things.

Hey, Ocean Eyes,” my father said. “Where’d you go on us?

I wanted to be the moron of the family, because morons seemed to have more fun, more freedom and more personality.

Who would have thought something that happened that long ago could have such power?

It's something that I know how to do because I taught for a very long time, so I can do it, and I feel a responsibility to do it - for instance, in this situation, where I'm touring specifically for this period of time. But most writers are not public people. There are a few writers out there who really enjoy it and are good at it, and can both work and do that at the same time, but I'm not one of those people.