It's a luxury being a writer, because all you ever think about is life.

For unlike my mother, I did not believe I could be anything I wanted to be. I could only be me.

The muse appears at the point in my writing when I sense a subtle shift, a nudge to move over, and everything cracks open, the writing is freed, the lanuage is full, resources are plentiful, ideas pour forth, and to be frank, some of these ideas surprise me. It seems as thought the universe is my friend and is helping me write, its hand over mine.

Words are more ardent if a man must struggle to find them.

People think it's a terrible tragedy when somebody has Alzheimer's. But in my mother's case, it's different. My mother has been unhappy all her life. For the first time in her life, she's happy.

Now they seemed to be in a contest over who could irritate her more, and she sometimes had to remind herself that teenagers had souls

Yesterday my daughter said to me, 'My marriage is falling apart.' And now all she can do is watch it falling.