My wife says I'm only comfortable when there's a fight. And it's true. The thing that motivates me is struggle.

Trauma is survivable, but often not much more. It kills you while allowing you to still live.

Some people think memoirs should be held to a perfect journalistic standard. Some people don't. Obviously I don't. My goal was never to create or to write a perfect journalistic standard of my life. It was always to be as literature.

Fear, he said, ran all of our lives. Fear, he said, after religion, was the most destructive force in the world.

He tells me I look as if I could use a hugand i laugh at him and he ignores me and steps forward and puts his arms around me and hugs me. I warm at the simple pleasure of human contact and for the first time in a long time i actually feel good." (James Frey, pg.38)

The greatest rules of dramatic writing are conflict, conflict, conflict.

America was first colonized by Puritans. Most of our earliest immigrants, and many since, have come here in order to practice their religious beliefs as they please. Our culture has always been, and will most likely always be, profoundly influenced by religion.