Uncle Stash said you didn't have to be crazy to to do something stupid, just young.
Sometimes a guy wants to feel like he learned something without being taught.
Regrets. Sure you think about regrets, but it's not regret for the things you've done that occupy you, as much as it is a longing for the things you'll never have a chance to do.
In sleep, my sister and I found a common breath. In dreams, we knew the moon.
Feeling the wind rush in through the broken window, Mary thought of how Gooch would say, You’re letting out the heat, when she kept the door open, and You’re letting out the cold, when her nose was in...
You think about these words a lot, and there are not many things, when you come right down to it, that you'll be happy to see the end of.
You do good mothering.
Write,' she said, 'as if you'll never be read. That way you'll be sure to tell the truth.
The strangest thing about strange things is that they're only strange when you hear about them or think about them later, but never when you're living them.
If you don't like something about yourself, change it. If you're OK with it, you gotta own it. There's nothing in between.
If heaven is tolerant and writers are allowed (bunch of liars though they are), I wonder if they gather for coffee to ponder the prose they should have written instead.
I wondered who would teach me, or if a boy could learn on his won, what it means to be a man.
I hum some secret place into being, thinking of this other me, the one that only I can see, a girl called She, who is not We, a girl who I will never be.
I felt the weight of my father's failures and the absence of my mother and I wondered who would teach me, or if a guy could learn on his own, what it means to be a man.
Fatal is fatal, but it doesn't have to be all downhill.
You're just not always in a place for as long as you thought you'd be.
You don’t know if you ruined your kids or if they were born that way.
The climb speaks to our character, but the view, I think, to our souls. The
I can't exactly say why I've chosen to write about the things that I am writing about. There are doubtless better stories from my life that I am missing, events and escapades I am not wise enough to k...
The final picture in the album was of Aunt Lovey and Uncle Stash, their black-and-white wedding photo. I hated that their picture came last, because it felt like they were saying goodbye.