We don't ruminate during a fight. Maybe in a bath, or driving a car, or as we take a walk. But not right smack in the middle of a dramatic moment.

This may be a little bit of a provocative thing to say, but the memoirist doesn't owe the reader anything other than a good story and the inclining of the mind in the direction of memory. Of course, the memoirist is not allowed to make things up. But the really skilled memoirist knows what to leave in and what to leave out to serve the story. In autobiography you can't do that.

I don't want to lean back into the past, or forward into the future. I don't want to wish the present moment away.

If we grew up with nothing, we're complicated with that. That's the thing I keep hearing from people.

If there's anything weirder than an introverted writer going to lots of social functions, it's an introverted writer being converted into an accidental guru.

When I lived in the city, I had learned to close my door against a lot of the noise, but when I open my door here, I'm not opening into the possibility that I'm going to run into somebody or be faced with a hundred choices about what I'm going to do, or which cafe I'm going to go to, or which way to distract myself.

My parents made the decision never to focus on my looks, and I had no sense of myself as beautiful.