I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look.

I tell people not to write too soon about their lives. Writing about yourself too young is loaded with psychological complexities.

I kept the fingers of my left hand crossed all the time, while on my right-hand fingers I counted anything at all—steps to the refrigerator, seconds on the clock, words in a sentence—to keep my head occupied. The counting felt like something to hang on to, as if finding the right numbers might somehow crack the code on whatever system ran the slippery universe we were moving through.

Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.

How much smaller the large places are once we're grown up, when we have car keys and credit cards.

When you do try to picture the boys who do ask you out, they're absolutely featureless, like old carvings eroded by centuries of rain and wind.