I remember the revelation it was to me when I realized I'd rather be smart in the way Elvis Presley was than in the way, say, Ludwig Wittgenstein was. The thing was, you could imagine you could be smart like Wittgenstein by just thinking hard enough, but Elvis just had it. It was almost spiritual. A kind of grace.

I decided I wanted out because it was killing me, and I couldnt see where to go with it that wouldnt be fatal.

An autobiography is a life story. It starts when you're born and continues until the end.

I shake my head and the tiny acrobats fall like spangles, like the cool rain on another planet, down to the inside of my feet.

I never thought I would write an autobiography, probably because my first novel, Go Now, is really all drawn from my life, even though it's more about the psychology going on.

A memoir is a book about some particular thread or theme or moment in a person's life, whereas an autobiography is the entire life.

A memoir takes some particular threads, some incidents, some experience from a person's life and gives an account of it.