We are well advised to keep on nodding terms with the people we used to be, whether we find them attractive company or not.

Had my credentials been in order I would never have become a writer. Had I been blessed with even limited access to my own mind there would have been no reason to write. I write entirely to find out what I’m thinking, what I’m looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

My first notebook was a Big Five tablet, given to me [at age five] by my mother with the sensible suggestion that I stop whining and learn to amuse myself by writing down my thoughts.

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

It Was Once Suggested to Me that, as an Antidote to Crying, I Put My Head in a Paper Bag.

We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices.