Summer nearly does me in every year. It's too hot and the light is unforgiving and the days go on way too long.

I'm very successful, but there are 50,000 general interest books published every year. If you don't want to read mine, there are others.

...because when people have seen you at their worst, you don't have to put on the mask as much.

I think that is why we stay close to our families, no matter how neurotic the members, how deeply annoying or dull- because when people have seen you at your worst, you don’t have to put on the mask as much.

If you are a writer, or want to be a writer, this is how you spend your days--listening, observing, storing things away, making your isolation pay off. You take home all you've taken in, all that you've overheard, and you turn it into gold. (Or at least you try.)

Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.

Sometimes I think God loves the ones who most desperately ache and are most desperately lost - his or her wildest, most messed-up children - the way you'd ache and love a screwed-up rebel daughter in juvenile hall.