The past could be jettisoned . . . but seeds got carried.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

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

Was there ever in anyone's life span a point free in time, devoid of memory, a night when choice was any more than the sum of all the choices gone before?

When you write, you're always revealing a difficult part of yourself. It may not be a part of yourself that looks as difficult - there are parts that look more difficult - but in fact, they are all difficult, and you get kind of used to doing that. It is sort of the nature of the thing.

we are imperfect mortal beings, aware of that mortality even as we push it away, failed by our very complication, so wired that when we mourn our losses we also mourn, for better or for worse, ourselves. as we were. as we are no longer. as we will one day not be at all.