I was a biography in constant motion, memory to the marrow of my bones.

How can one say, 'No, this isn't a part of life,' since it always is? The contaminant of sex, the redeeming corruption that de-idealizes the species and keeps us everlastingly mindful of the matter we are.

The book really comes to life in the rewriting.

Everybody else is working to change, persuade, tempt and control them. The best readers come to fiction to be free of all that noise.

Everyone becomes a part of history whether they like it or not and whether they know it or not.

Too late, but I understand. That we don't perish of understanding everything too late, that is a miracle. But we do perish of that -- of just that.

There is truth and then again there is truth. For all that the world is full of people who go around believing they've got you or your neighbor figured out, there really is no bottom to what is not known. The truth about us is endless. As are the lies.