Then you must teach my daughter this same lesson. How to lose your innocence but not your hope. How to laugh forever.

You should think about your character. Know where you are changing, how you will be changed, what cannot be changed back again.

You can never be an artist if your work comes without effort. That is the problem with modernink from a bottle. You do not have to think. You simply write what is swimming on the top of your brain. And the top is nothing but pond scum, dead leaves, and mosquito spawn.

I learned to forgive myself, and that enabled me to forgive my mother as a person.

But I don't have anything left inside of me to figure out where I fit in or what I want. If I want anything, it's to know what's possible to want.

My parents told me I would become a doctor and then in my spare time I would become a concert pianist. So, both my day job and my spare time were sort of taken care of.

I felt foolish and tired, as if I had been running to escape someone chasing me, only to look behind to discover there was no one there.