True memoir is written, like all literature, in an attempt to find not only a self but a world

French was the only language we had in common, and even that was like a dialect we had picked up at a rummage sale, rusty and missing a lot of essential parts.

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

Writing about why you write is a funny business, like scratching what doesn't itch. Impulses are mysterious, and explaining them must be done with mirrors, like certain cunning slight-of-hand routines.

Silence, that inspired dealer, takes the day's deck, the life, all in a crazy heap, lays it out, and plays its flawless hand of solitaire, every card in place. Scoops them up, and does it all over again.

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.

poetry is the sung voice of accurate perception.