Domesticity 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.

Confession makes you a more trustworthy narrator.

Until people see poetry as springing from all of life, they will isolate it in a creativity corner and treat it like a mascot.

The essay is a wonderful medium. I might mention that some writers who longed to be novelists were better as essayists: Sontag, Baldwin, Vidal, Mary McCarthy, Mailer.

Doubt is my boon companion, the faithful St. Bernard ever at my side. Whether writing essays or just going about daily life, I am constantly second-guessing myself. My mind is filled with 'yes, buts,' 'so whats?' and other skeptical rejoinders. I am forever monitoring myself for traces of folly, insensitivity, arrogance, false humility, cruelty, stupidity, immaturity and, guess what, I keep finding examples. Age has not made me wiser, except maybe in retrospect.

I like the freedom that comes with lowered expectations.

In the best nonfiction, it seems to me, you're always made aware that you are being engaged with a supple mind at work. The story line or plot in nonfiction consists of the twists and turns of a thought process working itself out.