Wear your heart on the page, and people will read to find out how you solved being alive.

He could not wait to get rid of them so he could enjoy remembering them.

I have written letters that are failures, but I have written few, I think, that are lies. Trying to reach a person means asking the same question over and over again: Is this the truth, or not? I begin this letter to you, then, in the western tradition. If I understand it, the western tradition is: Put your cards on the table.

I wanted to be a veterinarian, but slipped up when I hit organic chemistry.

He wondered how we know that what happens to us isn't good.

It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.' Is he kidding? I thought. Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough. Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body.

I assemble stories-me and a hundred million other people-at the sentence level. Not by coming up with a sweeping story line.