I wandered over across the hall where they were showing a short movie about vasectomies. Much later I told her that I'd actually gotten a vasectomy a long time ago, and somebody else must have gotten her pregnant. I also told her once that I had inoperable cancer and would soon be passed away and gone, eternally. But nothing I could think up, no matter how dramatic or horrible, ever made her repent or love me the way she had at first, before she really knew me.

With each step my heart broke for the person I would never find, the person who'd love me.

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.

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.

I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.

Before this moment I'd lived as a mind. Body, heart, soul, intellect, so we care ourselves into parts. But the whole of us, what can it be?

Its always been my tendency to lie to doctors, as if good health consisted only of the ability to fool them.