It's a no-win argument - that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend both our birth and our growth.

Safer than we are.” I told Franny. “Safer than love.” “let me tell ya kid,” Franny said to me, squeezing my hand. “Everything’s safer than love.

Just when you begin thinking of yourself as memorable, you run into someone who can't even remember having met you

And never forget, there is memory.

I begin with an interest in a relationship, a situation, a character.

The main character and the most important character are not always the same person - you have to know the difference.

No adult in my family would ever tell me anything about who my father was. I knew from an older cousin - only four years older than I am - everything, or what little I could discover about him.