To be anorexic...she thought, amounted to wanting to shed yourself of some of the imperfect mosaic of pieces that made you who you were. She could understand that now for, maybe underneath that desquamated self you would locate a new version.

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking.

Being a teacher at a restaurant in the town where you lived was a little like being a TV star.

People could not get enough of what they had lost, even if they no longer wanted it.

Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.

We do seem, as a culture, to fetishize the "sweep." But I know there's room for "big" short, fierce novels, and "big" solid ones.

But clearly life took people and shook them around until finally they were unrecognizable even to those who had once known them well. Still, there was power in once having known someone.