I never lose sight of the fact that before I was a writer, I was a teacher. I still am. My classroom's just gotten a little bigger.

How far can a person go... and still live with himself.

you never forget your first fall.

You might have to lose control before you could find out what you'd been missing.

I look for places like me: big, hollow, forgotten by most everyone.

If there's something as good as [him] in my life, I'm going to pay for it.

Where did you go?" "To the end of the driveway," my mother says. "I was nine months pregnant; that was the maximum distance I could waddle without feeling as if my uterus was falling out." I wince. "Do you have to be quite so graphic?" "What would you like me to call it, Zoe? A fetal living room?