“I didn't ask my mother to buy me a trumpet or a violin, I started right on the water hose.”

“Lolly nods. "Though when is the right time for that? I asked her for a new sports bra since I outgrew my last one and she looked at me as if I'd just asked her to buy me a pony.”

“Yet I remember the rule I set for myself-that I do something different from my mother. . . I started to believe I couldn't really do that if I was following in the path of either of my parents... That so-called rule helped me separate more fully from my mother and father, I realize, but maybe it also kept me from seeing what was right in front of me. ”

“I am always chilled and astonished by the would-be writers who ask me for advice and admit, quite blithely, that they "don't have time to read." This is like a guy starting up Mount Everest saying that he didn't have time to buy any rope or pitons.”

“From my mother's sleep I fell into the State,And I hunched in its belly till my wet fur froze.Six miles from earth, loosed from the dream of life,I woke to black flak and the nightmare fighters.When I died they washed me out of the turret with a hose.”

“I entered the water as naked as when my mother bore me. When I first touched the cold water I felt a shudder go through me, then the shudder was transformed into a sensation of wakefulness.”