Through writing, through that process, they realize that they become more intelligent, and more honest and more imaginative than they can be in any other part of their life.

It was strange to stand there in front of the mirror and see myself like I was my own best friend, a kid wanted to hang with forever. This was a boy I could travel to the seacoasts with, a boy I'd like to meet up with in foreign cities like Calcutta and London and Brazil, a boy I could trust who also had a good sense of humor and liked smoked oysters from a can and good weed and the occasional 40 ounces of malt. If I was going to be alone for the rest of my life this was the person I wanted to be alone with.

A couple of years I taught in graduate programs at NYU and Columbia, in the early eighties.

Loyalty is weird, it kicks in when you dont expect it and the people who deserve loyalty least seem to get it the most.

We know that people we love are both good and bad, but we expect strangers to be one or the other.

Much more than memoir; it's history.

Let the truth take care of itself, I decided. It's done all right on its own so far.