Because this business of becoming conscious, of being a writer, is ultimately about asking yourself, How alive am I willing to be?

I went to Goucher College in Maryland for the best possible reasons - to learn - but then I dropped out at 19 for the best possible reasons - to become a writer.

No one is more sentimentalized in America than mothers on Mother's Day, but no one is more often blamed for the culture's bad people and behavior.

A hundred years from now? All new people.

My mother was a not-too-devoted atheist. She went to Episcopal church on Christmas Eve every year, and that was mostly it.

I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.

... the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day. [pp. 65-66]