There are women succeeding beyond their wildest dreams because of their sobriety.

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

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.

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

Every now and then we enter the presence of the numinous and deduce for an instant how we're formed, in what detail the force that infuses every petal might specifically run through us, wishing only to lure us into our full potential.

Even the best of us are at least part-time bastards.

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