I didn't write the memoir with any sort of intention of feeling better. I wrote the memoir because I had a weird need to write a good story. But once I was done, I did feel better about myself. Not better, just calmer. Because a tremendous onus had been lifted off my day-to-day.

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.

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

There are still things out there in the universe to contemplate and spend our lives chasing.

I'm pretty much of the Shakespearean school. Dialogue is character. How we speak is who we are.

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.

Maybe it's easier to think about dishonesty and what kind of trouble you can get into as a writer when love and honesty collide and you sidestep that collision, either because you want to protect somebody or you want to blame somebody - which are the usual impulses in love: protection and blame, frequently at the same time - so you don't exactly tell the truth.