There were times . . . when it occurred to me that I was repeating my mother's life. Usually this thought struck me as funny. But if I happened to be tired, or if there were extra bills to pay and no money to pay them with, it seemed awful. I'd think 'This isn't the way our lives are supposed to be going.' Then I'd think 'Half the world has the same idea.

Did-a-chick? Dum-a-chum? Dad-a-cham? Ded-a-chek?

They were close to the end of the beginning . . .

I believe these stories exist because we sometimes need to create unreal monsters and bogies to stand in for all the things we fear in our real lives: the parent who punches instead of kissing, the auto accident that takes a loved one, the cancer we one day discover living in our own bodies. If such terrible occurrences were acts of darkness, they might actually be easier to cope with. But instead of being dark, they have their own terrible brilliance. . . and none shine so bright as the acts of cruelty we sometimes perpetrate in our own families.

Sometimes stories cry out to be told in such loud voices that you write them just to shut them up.

In small towns people scent the wind with noses of uncommon keenness.

I think that we're all mentally ill. Those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better - and maybe not all that much better after all.