One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

Grief is in two parts. The first is loss. The second is the remaking of life.

Our mythology tells us so much about fathers and sons. ... What do we know about mothers and daughters? ... Our power is so oblique, so hidden, so ethereal a matter, that we rarely struggle with our daughters over actual kingdoms or corporate shares. On the other hand, our attractiveness dries as theirs blooms, our journey shortens just as theirs begins. We too must be afraid and awed and amazed that we cannot live forever and that our replacements are eager for their turn, indifferent to our wishes, ready to leave us behind.

I think our material is our lives. That's part of being a modern writer, and we have to use it.

One of the things about parents and children is that there is no way that you go through this without there being mutual anger.

I've told the same story twelve different ways, but I think that's just part of what writers do. Once may not be enough.

We were not always 70, or rather our 70 is an accumulation of all the other ways we were. Our 5-year-old selves became our 10-year-old selves, and so on and on; and if we unpack our selves, the full album appears. Every moment is a part of the following moment, and we are all a continuum.