You have to shrink yourself to fit into this little life with him.

I felt I couldn't lose anything else, but just then I realized I already had: I'd lost the hope that I would ever be loved in just that way again.

I don't have any real goals except to follow one good sentence with another... I'm not the kind of writer who has a map.

We are all children until our fathers die.

I feel in some ways I've had a difficult life. And it makes me the kind of writer I am, in what I value, what I respect, what I hold dear.

During chemo, you're more tired than you've ever been. It's like a cloud passing over the sun, and suddenly you're out. But you also find that you're stronger than you've ever been. You're clear. Your mortality is at optimal distance, not up so close that it obscures everything else, but close enough to give you depth perception. Previously, it has taken you weeks, months, or years to discover the meaning of an experience. Now it's instantaneous.

I live by Edith Whartons rule to get rid of anything neither useful nor beautiful. So I put the TV out on the street.