Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others.

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.

I do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew up on.

I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient!

Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it.

Most great writers suffer and have no idea how good they are. Most bad writers are very confident. Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver, the bat girl in Yankee Stadium. That’s a more fruitful way to be.

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.