A mother is a story with no beginning. That is what defines her.

Our minds are mysterious; our conscious brain is like a ship on a sea that is obscure to us.

My whole life, I had been taught to read and study, to seek understanding in knowledge of history, of cultures.

Writing has always been the primary way I make sense of the world.

Sometimes you don't even know what you want until you find out you can't have it.

'Hamlet' is the best description of grief I've read because it dramatizes grief rather than merely describing it.

My mother died of metastatic colorectal cancer shortly before three P.M. on Christmas Day of 2008. I don't know the exact time of her death, because none of us thought to look at a clock for a while after she stopped breathing.