I don't write for catharsis; I have to write to understand.

That was the year, my twenty-eighth, when I was discovering that not all of the promises would be kept, that some things are in fact irrevocable and that it had counted after all, every evasion and every procrastination, every mistake, every word, all of it.

Lancaster, California ... that promised land sometimes called 'the west coast of Iowa.

The fear is for what is still to be lost.

The wind shows us how close to the edge we are.

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

The fancy that extraterrestrial life is by definition of a higher order than our own is one that soothes all children, and many writers.