I am fascinated by language in daily life: the way it can evoke an emotion, a visual image, a complex idea, or a simple truth.

A Mother is the one who fills your heart in the first place.

I learned to make things not matter, to put a seal on my hopes and place them on a high shelf, out of reach. And by telling myself that there was nothing inside those hopes anyway, I avoided the wounds of deep disappointment. The pain was no worse than the quick sting of a booster shot. And yet thinking about this makes me ache again. How is it that as a child I knew I should have been loved more? Is everyone born with a bottomless emotional resevoir?

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.

Whenever I'm with my mother, I feel as though I have to spend the whole time avoiding land mines.

While it is good to speak well, it is better to speak the truth.

The forbidden things were a great influence on my life. I was forbidden from reading A Catcher in the Rye.