“I tell myself Im fine on my own, but am I? No friends to fall back on, no relationships, no support. Left to my own devices, I have no devices.”

“I will take a new approach to death, because what is important about death is not the dead. Its the living. Those of us left behind.”

“I find the title How to Be Good. Curious, I open it up. I'm disappointed to find it's fiction.”

“there is something intriguing about knowing how things are going to turn out, but being constantly surprised about how they'll get there.”

“I'm completely out of control, and I can hear the beginnings of the chant, get/out/, but now that I'm not being touched maybe I can master it and I shut the world out: separating an orange into ski...”

“I let myself relax into the pattern of the recipe.”

“It seemed my wholelife was composed of these disjointedfractions of time, hanging around in onepublic place and then another, as if I werewaiting for trains that never came. And, likeone of those g...”

“Stress level: extreme. It's like she was a jar with the lid screwed on too tight, and inside the jar were pickles, angry pickles, and they were fermenting, and about to explode.”

“To withhold words is power. But to share our words with others, openly and honestly, is also power.”

“You have to follow your own voice. You have to be yourself when you write. In effect, you have to announce, 'This is me, this is what I stand for, this is what you get when you read me. I'm doing t...”

“...if you want your own distinctive voice, you first have to become someone...”