“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.”

“Don’t get sucked in, Dave was always saying to me. Kind of like Helder’s container idea: Notice everything, but don’t buy into it. Hold it.”

“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?”

“You don’t have to have clarity,” he said, “to take a clear position.”

“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…”

“The railing of the balcony was cold but the blue-black night air was so warm in October, in Florida, it felt as if it could hold you, all that wetness like a blanket of kisses.”