I don't go to church any more, but I think that Catholicism is rather like the brand they use on cattle: I feel so formed in that Catholic mould that I don't think I could adopt any other form of spirituality. I still get feelings of consolation about churches.

Modern morality is all about perception.

Divorce also entails the beginning of a supposition that that familial reality might have obstructed one's ability to perceive others.

I suppose, I said, it is one definition of love, the belief in something that only the two of you can see.

Parenthood, like death, is an event for which it is nearly impossible to be prepared. It brings you into a new relationship with the fact of your own existence, a relationship in which one may be rendered helpless.

I have no sense of a model or predecessor when I write a memoir: For me, the form exists as a method of processing material that retains too many connections to life to be approached strictly and aesthetically. A memoir is a risk, a one-off, a bastard child.

Reality might be described as the eternal equipoise of positive and negative.