biography is essentially a collaborative art, the latest biographer collaborating with all those who wrote earlier.

Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head... it's only a matter of degree.

In a way women are fleshier because of estrogen. It's hard for us to lose weight because when we get super skinny we don't ovulate. Women in camps during the Holocaust didn't menstruate and didn't ovulate. They were starving; they were terrified. Why emulate that condition? It's nonsensical to me.

The bruise on the heart which at first feels incredibly tender to the slightest touch eventually turns all the shades of the rainbow and stops aching. We forget about it. We even forget we have hearts until the next time. And then we wonder how we ever could have forgotten. We think this one is better, because, in fact, we cannot fully remember the time before.

the body is wiser than its inhabitants. the body is the soul. the body is god’s messenger.

It is the nature of those books we call classics to wait patiently on the shelf for us to grow into them.

we all carry the Houses of our Youth inside, and our Parents, too, grown small enough to fit within our Hearts.