You are not your past.

A memoir should have some uplifting quality, inspiring or illuminating, and that's what separates a life story that can influence other people.

I hope you never hear those words. Your mom. She died. They are different than other words. They are too big to fit in your ears. They belong to some strange, heavy, powerful language that pounds away at the side of your head, a wrecking ball coming at you again and again, until finally, the words crack a hole large enough to fit inside your brain. And in so doing, they split you apart.

I love you every day, Mom

You're not going to get to college - you're not even going to be qualified, even to go to a community college, if you don't address the basic problem of literacy in America. And there's no reason - no reason - for us to have that problem.

As long as we can love each other, and remember the feeling of love we had, we can die without ever really going away.

when your time came, it came, and that was that. You might say something smart on your way out, but you might just as easily say something stupid.