Love and violence-not to conquer one with the other but to live with both, that's what I've learned. Each pulling me a different way. If I relax my struggles they don't tear me in two, but lift me up.

And you, you ridiculous people, you expect me to help you.

I didnt finish the stories until we went to the Philippines and I got malaria. I couldnt work and I didnt have any money, but I had seven stories. So I wrote three or four more.

Through this feeling of helplessness suddenly burst a piercing nostalgia for the lost world of childhood. The way it came right up against the heart, that world, and against the face. No indoors or outdoors, only everything touching us, and the grown-ups lumbering past overhead like constellations.

What's funny about Jesus' Son is that I never even wrote that book, I just wrote it down. I would tell these stories and people would say, You should write these things down.

I'll never forget you. Your husband will beat you with an extension cord and the bus will pull away leaving you standing there in tears, but you were my mother.

We can’t always tell the whole story about ourselves.