Often, I think, displaced people imagine themselves leading double lives. So a portion of my identity has always been privately siphoned into what would have been if I had stayed in Wisconsin.

Even as a feminist, my whole life I'd been waiting for a man to love, who could love me. For decades, I'd thought that man would be my father. When I was 25, I met that man and he was my brother.

Love ruined people's lives, the way our parents said drugs could.

The transparency men have enjoyed for generations, about their ability to frankly work while also reveling in fatherhood, is still complicated for women. Which is not to say that anyone can have everything.

We come into the world whole, all of us, but we don't know that, don't know that life will be taking large chunks out of us, forever.

Writers collect stories of rituals: John Cheever putting on a jacket and tie to go down to the basement, where he kept a desk near the boiler room. Keats buttoning up his clean white shirt to write in, after work.

I unplug the phone and close the door and just stick with it. I don't ever go out for lunch and I don't take vacations. I like to be awake when no one else is: either just before dawn in the morning or late, late at night. Silence helps.