I would be writing and trying to write like Joan Didion. Or if I was reading Raymond Carver. You know, strong stylists. But that's how you find your voice, is imitating other people. So things like that didn't embarrass me, because I thought, well, that's how it goes. That's how everyone learns.

I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it.

I've never written about sex in my diary. Like if you read my diary, you wouldn't think I'm a virgin, but you would have no idea what it is that I've actually ever done.

Also, I used to think that one day I might get someone to iron my shirts, but the truth is I really like doing them myself.

I won't put in a load of laundry, because the machine is too loud and would drown out other, more significant noises - namely, the shuffling footsteps of the living dead.

After the trial, I watched as another female pathologist collected maggots from a spinal column found in the desert. There was a decomposed head, too, and before leaving work she planned to simmer it and study the exposed cranium for contusions. I was asked to pass this information along to the chief medical examiner, and, looking back, I perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully. 'Fire up the kettle,' I told him. 'Ol'-fashioned skull boil at five p.m.

I just looked at the pattern of my life, decided I didn't like it, and changed.