It's much harder when you're writing about your life, than when you're writing fiction.

You see things really different when your father is so intimately, so indisputably in charge of your continued existence on the planet.

Most dreams are also part reality (otherwise we wouldn’t believe them), and reality happens to be a condition that gives you plenty of chances through your life to rise to - no, soar through - the occasion.

After my parents divorced, my father remarried and my brothers were born when I was twelve and sixteen. I was thunderstruck at these kids. The "baby-ness" of them. Their toes. I had never been around babies before.

Often, I think that my brothers were the reason I didn't do something really stupid in my teenage years; I didn't want to disappoint them. Even though was I was pretty committed to disappointing everybody else.

It feels like people talk a lot, in their relationships and in therapy. But my family wasn't like that. My dad wasn't and I wasn't. Things were said, but via the language of action.

If you want to write in a mature and interesting way, you have to have sympathy for everyone that's involved.