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.

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

I'm not nearly smart enough or imaginative enough to tackle the novel form. Never happen.

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

I was 40 years old before I became an overnight success, and I'd been publishing for 20 years.

But I'm not ready to stop listening to the screwed-up inner voice that's been ordering me around for a lifetime. My head thinks it can kill me... and go on living without me.

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.