In my life the right question is simply this: What can I do to be happy today?

I like art that trusts its audience, that's written for readers who like to work hard. I like art that knows its readers are up to the challenge of interacting with difficult material.

No matter what we've done, no matter the disappointments and sullied blunders, today is the opportunity to do right by ourselves.

Memoirs need confusion. It's the thing every human has in common. We are magnificently confused.

I always joke that every novel is really about the same thing: one person's struggle against society.

Memoir is a unique opportunity to revisit yourself. I don't mean by memory. I mean in the revision process. You don't just write a chapter and that's it. You must constantly return to it. You must dote on it. And even if it's saying something ugly about who you are, you have to find the poetry in it. You have to find the poetry in yourself.

It's a beautiful aspect of narrative construction, hunting for the right images and metaphors to render our character's hearts/minds/souls as though they're ecosystems, full-fledged settings for a reader to inhabit like a place.