Be your own editor/critic. Sympathetic but merciless!

I remember once asking Grandma about a book she was reading, a biography of Abraham Lincoln, and how she answered me: this was the first conversation of my life that concerned a book, and 'the life of the mind' - and now, such subjects have become my life.

Boxing has become America's tragic theater.

It's always a challenge to discover the most effective first sentence, and the most effective final sentence, in a chapter for instance, and in the book as a whole.

Her wish to die was as pervasive as a dial tone: you lift the receiver, it's always there.

See, people come into your life for a reason. They might not know it themselves, why. You might not know it. But there's a reason. There has to be

In families there are frequently matters of which no one speaks, nor even alludes. There are no words for these matters. As the binding skeleton beneath the flesh is never acknowledged by us and, when at last it defines itself, is after all an obscenity.