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

Casebook is my attempt at a love story. I had a vision of a difficult love.

My mother was a single parent, a speech therapist who worked for a company that kept a substantial percentage of the income they billed for her to teach stroke victims in convalescent hospitals to talk again.

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

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.

The first person besides my mother who believed in me was a man whose last name I never knew. He was my boss, the manager of Swenson's Ice Cream shop.

Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.