No matter what circumstances, it's hard to be a parent and maintain a sense of self and identity in the world.

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.

You try to sit down at approximately the same time every day. This is how you train your unconscious to kick in for you creatively. ... You put a piece of paper in the typewriter, or you turn on your computer and bring up the right file. ... You begin rocking, just a little at first, and then like a huge autistic child. ... Then your mental illnesses arrive at the desk like your sickest, most secretive relatives. And they pull up chairs in a semicircle around the computer, and they try to be quiet but you know they are there with their weird coppery breath, leering at you behind your back.

He told me about his monster. His sounded just like mine without quite so much mascara. When people shine a little light on their monster, we find out how similar most of our monsters are.

I got a lot of things that society had promised would make me whole and fulfilled - all the things that the culture tells you from preschool on will quiet the throbbing anxiety inside you - stature, the respect of colleagues, maybe even a kind of low-grade fame.

Her purse was a weight, ballast; it tethered her to the earth as her mind floated away.

I was the angriest daughter on earth, and also, one of the most devoted.