I come to writing from hearing great stories as a child in Louisiana, where the mark of a person was his or her ability to be a raconteur. I also come to writing as a professional actress whose body has been trained to listen and smell and inhabit characters without judgment.

Can you reclaim that free-girl smile, or is it like virginity- once you loose it, that's it?

But who has time to write memoirs? I’m still living my memoirs.

I want to lay up like that, to float unstructured, without ambition or anxiety. I want to inhabit my life like a porch.

The love we most cherish will, of necessity, bring us pain. Because that love is like the setting of a body with broken bones. But I want to stage the setting. I want to direct all scenes.

Good enough is good enough. Perfect will make you a big fat mess every time.

I now know that things I always thought I could depend on can crash in an instant. Because of the love that I have been shown, I now know what it means to be 'beloved.' I now know that no breath is to be taken for granted.