I feel I've always been writing about self-identity. How do we become who we are? So I'm just writing from experience what's concerned me.

I was six when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength..."strongest wind cannot be seen."

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

A mother is always the beggining. She is how things begin.

I thought this man had long ago drained everything from my heart. But now something strong and bitter flowed and made me feel another emptiness in a place I didn't know was there. I cursed this man aloud so he could hear. You had dog eyes. You jumped and followed whoever called you. Now you chase your own tail.

We all become different readers in how we respond to books, why we need them, what we take from them. We become different in the questions that arise as we read, in the answers that we find, in the degree of satisfaction or unease we feel with those answers...In the hands of a different reader, the same story can be a different story.

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