Writing is so hard. And then, sometimes, it is so bewilderingly easy.

No memoirists writes for long without experiencing an unsettling disbelief about the reliability of memory, a hunch that memory is not, after all, just memory.

Planes are my foxhole. I'm always on my knees in them.

Looking repeatedly into the past, you do not necessarily become fascinated with your own life, but rather with the phenomenon of memory.

A careful first draft is a failed first draft

You can’t put much on paper before you betray your secret self, try as you will to keep things civil.

We only store in memory images of value. To write about one's life is to live it twice, and the second time is both spiritual and historical.