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

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.

The cold was our pride, the snow was our beauty. It fell and fell, lacing day and night together in a milky haze, making everything quieter as it fell, so that winter seemed to partake of religion in a way no other season did, hushed, solemn.

Fundamentally, [prayer] is a position, a placement of oneself.

Maybe being oneself is always an acquired taste.

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.

Silence was the first prayer I learned to trust.