You have to separate yourself from your parents. You do. In order to find yourself.

Stories live in your blood and bones, follow the seasons and light candles on the darkest night-every storyteller knows she or he is also a teacher.

America had taken my father from me. And over most of the years of his illness, I gradually started feeling this support system from this country who-people grieving along with us.

Even if the Bush Administration had flung open the gates to stem-cell research years ago, we would not be at the point of offering treatment today. Christopher Reeve would still have been taken from us. But we would be closer.

I have a feeling of reverence about my father being in his 80s - a feeling that I want to whisper, take soft steps, not intrude too much. He's like a stately old cathedral to me now.

The house I grew up in had large plate-glass windows, which birds frequently crashed into headfirst. My father helped me assemble a bird hospital, consisting of a few shoe boxes, some old rags, and tiny dishes for water and food.

When I was a child, our summer days were spent swimming; chlorine in my hair was like perfume to me.