A childhood is what anyone wants to remember of it. It leaves behind no fossils, except perhaps in fiction.
This is why I read novels: so I can escape my own unrelenting monologue.
In a long and healthy life, which is what most of us have, there is plenty of time.
The recounting of a life is a cheat...even our own stories are obscenely distorted.
I couldn't have been a novelist without being a mother. It gives you a unique witness point of the growth of a personality. It was a kind of biological component for me that had to come first. My children gave this other window on the world.
There are chapters in every life which are seldom read and certainly not aloud.