Memoir is not an act of history but an act of memory, which is innately corrupt.

Ten years, she's dead, and I still find myself some mornings reaching for the phone to call her. She could no more be gone than gravity or the moon.

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.

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

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

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

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.