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.

Reading is socially accepted disassociation. You flip a switch and you’re not there anymore. It’s better than heroin. More effective and cheaper and legal.

Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.

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.

We are in the grip of some big machine grinding us along. The force of it simplifies everything. A weird calm settled over me from inside out. What is about to happen has stood in line to happen. All the roads out of that instant have been closed, one by one.

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.