Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.

Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms.

Everyone has two memories. The one you can tell and the one that is stuck to the underside of that, the dark, tarry smear of what happened.

And sometimes we cling because the memory is so painful that we can't stop visiting it and hoping to make it come out differently. The risk of letting go is that we have to confront our own selves and our own possibilities.

I met Jay Jonhson. I won him the way poor people occasionally win the lottery: Shameless perseverance and embarrassingly dumb luck, and every time I see one of those sly, toothless, beaten-down souls on TV holding a winning ticket, I think, Go, team.

It takes something to get married: nerve, hope, a strong desire to make a certain statement - and it takes something to stay married: more hope, determination, a sense of humor, and needs that are best met by being in a pair.

My writing process, such as it is, consists of a lot of noodling, procrastinating, dawdling, and avoiding.