Maybe this is the point: to embrace the core sadness of life without toppling headlong into it, or assuming it will define your days.

Grief doesn't necessarily make you noble. Sometimes it just makes you crazy, or primitive with fear.

What do you do when the story changes in midlife? When a tale you have told yourself turns out to be a little untrue, just enough to throw the world off-kilter? It’s like leaving the train at the wrong stop: You are still you, but in a new place, there by accident or grace, and you will need your wits about you to proceed.

If writers possess a common temperament, it's that they tend to be shy egomaniacs; publicity is the spotlight they suffer for the recognition they crave.

My idea of a productive day, as both a child and an adult, was reading for hours and staring out the window.

It's and old, old story: I had a friend and we shared everything, and then she died and so we shared that, too.

The belief that life was hard and often its worst battles were fought in private, that it was possible to walk through fear and come out scorched but still breathing.