“Life is like a nice fresh batch of Swiss cheese. Note to self: savor the holes, too, like the spaces between musical notes.”

“I took notes on the people around me, in my town, in my family, in my memory. I took notes on my own state of mind, my grandiosity, the low self-esteem. I wrote down the funny stuff I overheard. I learned to be like a ship's rat, veined ears trembling, and I learned to scribble it all down.”

“You lose the known package of your nice organized self almost instantly here. Overeating is one way back, the way it is at funerals at home.”

“Most people's intuitions are drowned out by folk sayings. We have a moment of real feeling or insight, and then we come up with a folk saying that captures the insight in a kind of wash. The intuition may be real and ripe, fresh with possibilities, but the folk saying is guaranteed to be a cliche, stale and self-contained.”

“One writer I know tells me that he sits down every morning and says to himself nicely, "It's not like you don't have a choice, because you do-- you can either type or kill yourself.”

“In a library, you can find small miracles and truth, and you might find something that will make you laugh so hard that you will get shushed, in the friendliest way. I have found sanctuary in libraries my whole life, and there is sanctuary there now, from the war, from the storms of our families and our own minds. Libraries are like mountains or meadows or creeks: sacred space. So this afternoon, I'll walk to the library.”

“Life with most teenagers was like having a low-grade bladder infection. It hurts, but you had to tough it out.”