Memory is, first, a captivating mystery.

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

Memoirists wish to tell their mind, not their story.

Prayer as focus is not a way of limiting what can be seen; it is a habit of attention brought to bear on all that is.

Poverty didn't necessarily engender an envy of wealth; sometimes it might beget a passion for decency.

Memoirists, unlike fiction writers, do not really want to 'tell a story.' They want to tell it all - the all of personal experience, of consciousness itself. That includes a story, but also the whole expanding universe of sensation and thought ... Memoirists wish to tell their mind. Not their story.

A peculiarity of the American historical sensibility allows us to be proud of great-grandfathers (or even grandfathers) who lived in crushing poverty, while the poverty of a father is too close for comfort.