Writing is an extreme privilege but it's also a gift. It's a gift to yourself and it's a gift of giving a story to someone.

And for all those years, we never talked about the disaster at the recital or my terrible accusations afterward at the piano bench. All that remained unchecked, like a betrayal that was now unbreakable. So I never found a way to ask her why she had hoped something so large that failure was inevitable. And even worse, I never asked her what frightened me the most: Why had she given up hope?

I saw what I had been fighting for: it was for me, a scared child.

I'd like to be more forgiving. There are times when I've had a hard time forgiving people who have betrayed me.

That is the saddest part when you lose someone you love - that person keeps changing. And later you wonder, Is this the same person I lost? Maybe you lost more maybe less, then thousand different things that come from your memory or imagination - and you do not know which is which, which was true, which is false.

I also thought of playing improvisational jazz and I did take lessons for a while. At first I tried to write fiction by making up things that were completely alien to my life.

You can have pride in what you do each day, but not arrogance in what you were born with.