Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal.

Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.

The secret to being a writer is that you have to write. It's not enough to think about writing or to study literature or plan a future life as an author. You really have to lock yourself away, alone, and get to work.

Time moves only forward, never back. We look forward to a moment and then it arrives and an instant later it is gone. Like something on the surface of a river that we reached for but did not touch in time and it carried on, away. You cannot be a prisoner of your past against your will. Because you can only live in the past inside your mind.

and she's a nurse. do you know how hard nursing school is? it's like medical school. so she's obviously smart.

All of us are richer and more fascinating and more complex than we can ever know.

Other people sound flat to my ear; their words just hang in the air. But when my mother says something, the ends curl.