I've never contended that I had a really horrible life.

I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer.

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.

I get about five memoirs per week in my mailbox, and few of them inspire anything but a desire to pick up the channel changer.

He never gave up on me, I only stopped being matriculated.

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.

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.