“When you write, you believe in something no one else can see. You spend lots of time committed to a project for which there are no assurances, no guarantees. Being a writer subjects you to the same doubts, the same unpopularity, the same nagging questions that believers struggle with. Writing is communing with the unseen…”

“Off and on for many years, I tried to write a book about my childhood. I’d bring chapters to workshop, to writing group, and I always got the same comments: How could you live this way? How could you survive this? It’s too raw. You don’t speak to these people, do you? I was deeply hurt by these reactions, and also confused. This was my mother. I loved her. This was my family. My life. How could it be too raw?”

“I started writing everything down.I wrote for the same reason someone lost sticks a message in a bottle. I’m here. Help. Please find me.”

“Writing a book is exactly like love. You don’t hold back. You give it everything you have. If it doesn’t work out, you’re heartbroken, but you move forward and start again anyway. You have to.You don’t hold some of yourself in reserve. It’s all or nothing. There are no guarantees. ”

“I think everyone has one day like this, and some people have more than one. It's the day of the accident, the midlife crisis, the breakdown, the meltdown, the walkout, the sellout, the giving up, giving away, or giving in. The day you stop drinking, or the day you start. The day you know things will never be the same again.”

“I’d set out to write a book about how we learn to trust our own experience in the face of confusion, doubt, and anxiety. What I ended up with is the story of how we love each other in spite of immense limitations”

“How, I asked, could I have gone my whole life not knowing about my mother? How could I have not known what Keith knew when he saw our house? “It’s your mom,” Helder said. “Because it’s Mom.” He sounded firm and knowing and clear. “When a child has an alcoholic father, he sees him drink all day long but he doesn’t have a label, a concept. You just know that at night, when the tires make a certain sound in the driveway and the doors slam a certain way, with a certain sound, you just know you need to hide.”