I really do like to write and when I'm not, I think, "Okay, I'll be a good citizen now" but fact is, that's secondary.
Phillip LopateDomesticity has been a challenge for me but painful as it's been, engaging with family has been a school for reducing solipsism and increasing my understanding of people's different reactions to stress.
Phillip LopateIf someone in my family is getting emotionally bent out of shape, I've had to learn to adapt.
Phillip LopateI imagined a psychic pain growing inside him (myself) that demanded some physical outlet. Suicide must have been his attempt to give Pain a body, a representation, to put it outside himself. A need to convert inner torment into some outward tangible wound that all could see. It was almost as though suicide were a last-ditch effort at exorcism, in which the person sacrificed his life in order that the devil inside might die.
Phillip Lopate