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

We write to discover what we think.

I need an hour alone before dinner, with a drink, to go over what I've done that day. I can't do it late in the afternoon because I'm too close to it. Also, the drink helps. It removes me from the pages.

Innocence ends when one is stripped of the delusion that one likes oneself.

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

If you want to understand what you're thinking, you kind of have to work it through and write it. And the only way to work it through, for me, is to write it.

I learned early to keep death in my line of sight, keep it under surveillance, keep it on cleared ground and away from any brush where it might coil unnoticed.