Prior to penicillin and medical research, death was an everyday occurrence. It was intimate.

But I think everybody should write. I think those people with stories who don't write should be stomped on.

Sometimes all that saves me is being willing to make mistakes. There are projects that strike me as so beautiful, important, complicated, or just plain big, that they convince me of my own inadequacy. This awful state of reverence leads to paralyzing brain freeze. At times like that the only way out is for me to decide, 'To hell with it. I can't do it right, so I'll do it wrong. I can't do it well, but I can do it badly.' Sometimes, with luck, while I'm sweating to do it wrong, I stumble on a right way.

We survive until, by sheer stamina, we escape into the dim innocence of our own adulthood and its forgetfulness.

The truth is always an insult or a joke, lies are generally tastier. We love them. The nature of lies is to please. Truth has no concern for anyone's comfort

It is coincidence, I decide, and I am getting old and batty, thinking the universe revolves around me.

Let's just say, the American school of suburban angst is not my cup of tea.