Settling other people's land is an American tradition.

The last introvert in a world of extroverts. Silence: my response to both emptiness and saturation. But silence frightens people. I had to learn how to talk. Out of politeness.

Researchers warn us against walking out on married life without a dang good reason.

My own habit had always been to write about the things that ticked me off in a given day. If I kept a journal at all, I kept it to vent.

Before I published anything, I dreamed of publication, but I didn't actually write for it. I imagined that writing for an audience was something for fancier people. I aspired, but mostly I wrote for myself. I wrote because it made me happy.

In our cultural history, all emotions have been more culturally acceptable to women.

It is a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructible in our wake and, at the same time, are drawn to all the things that kill: whiskey and cigarettes, unprotected sex, and deep-fried burritos.