I would hit a scene about my mother screaming at me during her breakdown, drunk or using pills, and she'd turn into a monster. Which she wasn't. She was a human: somebody who loved me and somebody with a problem.

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

My mom was a social worker. I had a pretty good idea of what the authorities can do when a parent's not around.

Resisting and avoiding pain sucks energy-and time. The more you let yourself feel those minute-and-a-half hells, the quicker you'll start feeling those minute-and-a-half happinesses.

I turned what was a wonderful case of self-reliance into a case of self-exile. Which is not uncommon, I think, in people who grow really early and have to learn how to take care of themselves. They have trouble hinging their lives with anybody 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.

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.