Iknew that all the attributes he was teased for, at age five, were going to work in his favor by thetime he was thirty-five...but I couldn't get him there overnight. You can't fast-forward your child'slife, no matter how much you want to.

Maybe you had to leave in order to really miss a place; maybe you had to travel to figure out how beloved your starting point was... ...Parents aren't the people you come from. They're the people you want to be, when you grow up. I sat between my mother and my father, watching strangers on TV carry in Shaker rockers and dusty paintings and ancient beer tankards and cranberry glass dishes; people and their hidden treasures, who had to be told by experts that they'd taken something incredibly precious for granted.

What could it be like to find out, in a matter of minutes, that the person you believed the sun rose and set on was not the person you'd thought?

I think my writing has become "cleaner."

Since it had gotten so quiet in the room that you could hear the sound of your own doubts.

My friends say I have two speeds: fast and blistering.

If you were drifting with a thousand other people, could you really still say you were lost?