It strikes me that whatever advantages there are to being a boy--getting to stay out late and having other people wash your clothes and bring you plates of stuff--get undercut by having to play football.

I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves.

The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold.

A dysfunctional family is any family with more than one person in it.

Mother’s particular devils had remained mysterious to me for decades. So had her past. Few born liars ever intentionally embark in truth’s direction, even those who believe that such a journey might axiomatically set them free.

The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker.

The words and sentences you take into your body from books are no less sacred and healing than communion. Surely at least one such person lives in your zip code.