No, Miss Wright didn't want to meet her kid. To her, that relationship was just as important, just as ideal and impossible as it would be to the child. She'd expect that young man to be perfect, smart, and talented, everything to compensate for all the mistakes that she'd made. The whole wasted, unhappy mess of her life.

I see so many tattoos of my stuff on people - tattoos of my book covers, tattoos of quotes . . . it's kind of daunting sometimes.

If emotion can create a physical action, then duplicating the physical action can re-create the emotion.

People don't want their lives fixed. Nobody wants their problems solved. Their dramas. Their distractions. Their stories resolved. Their messed cleaned up. Because what would they have left? Just the big scary unknown.

With my eyes closed, I ask if she knows how this will all turn out. "Long-term or short-term?" she asks. Both. "Long-term," she says, "we're all going to die. Then our bodies will rot. No surprise there. Short-term, we're going to live happily ever after." Really? "Really," she says. "So don't sweat it.

I am not loved. I am not a beautiful soul. I am not a good-natured, giving person. I am not anybody's savior.

What I mean is sometimes, for an artist, chronic pain can be a gift.