Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.

Writing was the soul of everything else ... Wanting to be a writer was wanting to be a person.

The materials of true poetry are always humble, absolutely idiosyncratic, the autobiographical tatters that, in gifted hands, are made into the memoir that fits us all.

The world is full of mystery but it must not be choked with secrets: we must talk to one another.

I don't write about what I know: I write in order to find out what I know.

It is hard to sever the cords that tie us to our slavery and leave intact those that bind us to ourselves.

The real subject of autobiography is not one's experience but one's consciousness. Memoirists use the self as a tool.