“Drawing things makes them seem more real and makes me feel more alive. It also makes me pin down and remember things - landscapes, season, weather, occasions, incidents, people - that would otherwise have melted from my memory.”

“Memory can make a thing seem to have been much more than it was.”

“There's lots of things you don't know. All kinds of strange things . . . mostly they happened before we were born: that makes them seem to me so much more real.”

“I love when people quote me. It makes me feel that my words have meaning. People give words power. When they speak out for things they feel, we all become alive.”

“It occurred to me that the act of writing had led me through a swirl of memories that might otherwise have ended in paralysis or worse. By telling stories, you objectify your own experience. You separate it from yourself. You pin down certain truths. You make up others. You start sometimes with an incident that truly happened, like the night in the shit field, and you carry it forward by inventing incidents that did not in fact occur but that nonetheless help to clarify and explain.”

“It’s a terrible thing but it seems like tragedy brings people together, makes them more supportive, more dependent.”