People always tell me either A. you love him. B. you hate him. My usual answer? C. All of the above.

My mother had died when I wrote my first book. I was twenty-seven, so it was right at the beginning of my writing life. I don't know if she had lived, if I would have done it, certainly not quite like I did. But, you can't rethink it. You wrote what you wrote, it meant something to other people, and that's your good.

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

It is hard to hold on to friendships when people move away to another state or to another world.

Self-pity is never useful. It tends to distort like a fun-house mirror.

I am not a perfect friend, and it is impossible not to rebuff or be rebuffed if you move about the world.

I don't really think it comes as a shock to every writer if somebody in their family is mad at them. Yes, it's very upsetting. But it's inherent in the process of trying to make sense of one's life, which is what I think is perhaps at the bottom of writing at all.