What is a family, after all, except memories? Haphazard and precious as the contents of a catch-all drawer in the kitchen.

Except that awards are competitive, which is a negative thing, they are wonderful for singling out deserving individuals and bringing their work to the attention of many potential readers who might otherwise have been totally unaware of them.

I've always been so interested in personal history. I'm very fascinated by my parents' and my grandparents' generations. I seem to think that they had a resilience and an integrity that may be somewhat deficient in my own generation, and in subsequent generations as well, because America has been rather easy to live in since the Depression.

I write so much because my cat sits on my lap. She purrs so I don't want to get up. She's so much more calming than my husband.

Running! If there's any activity happier, more exhilarating, more nourishing to the imagination, I can't think of what it might be.

Yet the fact had no consciousness of itself except through me.

Of our hurts we make monuments of survival. If we survive.