Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it.

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

The truth is when I went to graduate school I would've said I was among the least talented of the students, I was certainly the least smart, or less educated. But I worked very hard.

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.

If you live in the dark a long time and the sun comes out, you do not cross into it whistling. There's an initial uprush of relief at first, then-for me, anyway- a profound dislocation. My old assumptions about how the world works are buried, yet my new ones aren't yet operational.There's been a death of sorts, but without a few days in hell, no resurrection is possible.

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

For me, everything's too much and nothing's enough.