I have replaced my instinct for secrecy with an instinct for confession.

I always wished I could go to confession. I was so full of things I couldn't name and had an instinct to hide. I felt burdened by the loneliness of my interior life. I wanted some container that I could empty myself into, some ear that would never be shocked, even if it offered me some kind of penance.

It has been my experience that the people I judge most harshly are the ones in whom I recognize some part of myself.

When I was a kid, I was told that I had a biological father, but that he didn't have much importance. I had an adoptive father who was present, who loved me, who was up to the task. And he was. So, I didn't question that story, until I was thirty-two, and suddenly realized that I was curious, that he did have something to do with me.

I never think about anything in my brain. I think in very small repetitive circles inside my own brain. That's why I'm a writer. It's the only way I get any sort of conclusion or understanding about anything.

I can still discern people's weaknesses, but it doesn't make me want to exploit them; it makes me want to hug them.

Children's stories force logic upon the gruesome facts of our lives. They mirror our troubles and submit them to a chain of causality.