I ... have another cup of coffee with my mother. We get along very well, veterans of a guerrilla war we never understood.

In terms of work, I never felt that I've done it right. I always want to have done it differently, to have done it better, a different way.

I learned early to keep death in my line of sight, keep it under surveillance, keep it on cleared ground and away from any brush where it might coil unnoticed.

I do have a strong sense of an order in the universe.

We all survive more than we think we can.

Only the dying man can tell how much time he has left.

Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.