And so it is that you learn how to pass, if you're lucky, to look like everyone else, even though you're broken inside.

I've come to think that's what heaven is- a place in the memory of others where our best selves live on.

I like the assumption that everyone is trying his best, and we should all just be kind to each other.

Time constricts and flattens, you know. It's not evenly weighted. Certain moments linger in the mind and others disappear.

When something terrible happens, a lifetime of small events and unremarkable decisions, of unresolved anger, and unexplored fears begins to play itself out in ways you least expect. You've been going along from one day to the next, not realizing that all those disparate words and gestures were adding up to something, a conclusion, you didn't anticipate. And later, when you begin to retrace your steps you see that you will need to reach back further than you could have imagined, beyond words and thoughts and even dreams, perhaps to make sense of what happened.

I have a lot of empathy for women who fit their writing into the crevices of their too-busy lives, as I once did.

One of the wonderful things about being a writer is that you're constantly dredging up some arcane knowledge or long-forgotten experience, rediscovering old passions and interests.