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.

Be willing to be a child and be the Lilliputian in the world of Gulliver.

There's a space at the bottom of an exhale, a little hitch between taking in and letting out that's a perfect zero you can go into. There's a rest point between the heart muscle's close and open - an instant of keenest living when you're momentarily dead. You can rest there.

In my godless household, poems were the closest we came to sacred speech -- the only prayers said.

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

The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.

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.