A pool game mixes ritual with geometry.

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

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.

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.

Your heart, Mary Karr, he'd say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of a dull spear as he said, Your heart knows what your head don't. Or won't.

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

I always say that a poet loves the world, and the prose writer needs to create an alternative world.