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.

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

Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't.

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.

Im always terrified when Im writing.

The shreiking fight or the out-of-character insult endures forever, while the daily sweetness dissolves like sugar in water.

I think we fall in love and become adults and become citizens in a way by writing stories about ourselves.