I'm a very tactile learner, so I need analog index cards, moving them all about, trying out various sequences for the book's architecture.

It's important to write like your readers are brilliant.

The question why, at least in my life, often leads to despair. Why did this happen to me? Why didn't someone who claimed to love me treat me with respect, compassion, kindness? Etc. These questions never have answers. They are an ocean, and you'll never swim to the other side. Eventually, you'll tire and die.

I never wanted/expected to write a memoir, but this life thing, it has a way of sideswiping our worlds, scaring us so thoroughly that our past lenses of contextualizing events don't work - they cease to matter.

The point of reading is to inhabit a consciousness that doesn't belong to the reader, immersing yourself in a life that's wholly realized. And a huge facet of our psychic and existential make-ups is the things we're not proud of, things we didn't ask to experience, the scenarios we flubbed.

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

I struggle with staying clean every day, and what really keeps me from doing something stupid is my daughter.