In our memories the stories of our lives defy chronology, resist transcription: past ambushes present, and future hurries into history.

Things hardly ever work on the first try. We'll make another, a better one.

I always told my dad I'd play professional football.

In our memories the stories of our lives defy chronology, resist transcription: past ambushes present, and future hurries into history.

Leave home, leave the country, leave the familiar. Only then can routine experience--buying bread, eating vegetables, even saying hello--become new all over again.

I guess whatever maturity is there may be there because I've been keeping a journal forever. In high school my friends would make fun of me - you're doing your man diary again. So I was always trying to translate experience into words.

I write reviews of science books for the Boston Globe, so I like to give science books.