My mother began to go crazy. Not in a 'Let's paint the kitchen red!' sort of way. But crazy in a 'gas oven, toothpaste sandwhich, I am God' sort of way.

The thing for someone just starting off [in writing] is to write. You need to have limber fingers, whether you write with your fingers or you type on your laptop, but you need to have a limber mind and you need to be able to write without judging what you've written, at least right away, and without editing right away.

I couldn't help but think, This car is taking me to a mental hospital and my mother is treating it like open-mic night at a Greenwich Village café.

Nobody's trying to kill you, Deirdre. You're killing yourself.

There's not enough of me left over.

Miracles do happen. You must believe this. No matter what else you believe about life, you must believe in miracles.

The past does not haunt us. We haunt the past. We allow our minds to focus in that direction. We open memories and examine them. We reexperience emotions we felt during the painful events we experienced because we are recalling them in as much detail as we can.