To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves--there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home.

If you aren't aware of the reader, you're working in a vacuum.

Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write.

I came into adult life equipped with an essentially romantic ethic.

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

I lead a very conventional life.

A pool is, for many of us in the West, a symbol not of affluence but of order, of control over the uncontrollable. A pool is water, made available and useful, and is, as such, infinitely soothing to the western eye.