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.

There's nothing confessional about crafting and shaping a story out of a lived life. In fact, it's quite the opposite - the writer has to be able to transcend the life, to see it as if standing outside of it, in order to be able to make something of it. There's something enormously satisfying and gratifying about crafting something, taking all that chaos and giving it shape.

Writing well involves walking the path of most resistance. Sitting still, being patient, allowing the lunatic dream to take shape on the page, then the shaping, the pencil on the page, breathing, slowing down, being willing–no, more than willing, being wide open–to press the bruise until it blossoms.

There are books that a writer undertakes because she wants to go on a journey, and there are journeys a writer undertakes because she wants to write a book.

Let me tell you something about hypochondria: It's a pernicious, undermining little demon. It won't kill you, but it will sap the color from your life so that in the loveliest moments, the moments of grace, you are hit with that whisper in your ear that takes it all away. I'm sick, I'm dying - I just don't know it yet.

Writing has been my window-flung wide open to this magnificent, chaotic existence-my way of interpreting everything within my grasp.

Michael Lowenthal has written a big-hearted and wise book about familial love in all its richness and complexity.