That no one dies of migraine seems, to someone deep into an attack, an ambiguous blessing.

If we do not respect ourselves, we are on the one hand forced to despise those who have so few resources as to consort with us, so little perception as to remain blind to our fatal weaknesses. On the other, we are peculiarly in thrall to everyone we see, curiously determined to live out — since our self-image is untenable — their false notions of us… We play roles doomed to failure before they are begun, each defeat generating fresh despair at the urgency of divining and meeting the next demand made upon us.

Grammar is a piano I play by ear.

You have to make sure you have the characters you want. That's really the most complicated part.

I work every day. Sometimes I don't accomplish anything every day, but if I don't work every day, I get depressed and get afraid to start again. So I do something every day.

Tuesday, September 11, 2001, dawned temperate and nearly cloudless in the eastern United States.

Memory fades, memory adjusts, memory conforms to what we think we remember.