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" The thing I have to do as a writer, and that God permits me to do, is that I have to be willing to fail. "

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" If dysfunction means that a family doesn't work, then every family ambles into some arena in which that happens, where relationships get strained or even break down entirely. We fail each other or disappoint each other. That goes for parents, siblings, kids, marriage partners - the whole enchilada. "

" I don't have a copy of my books, and the degree to which I never read them is profound. I never look. "

" The emotional stakes a memoirist bets with could not be higher, and it's physically enervating. I nap on a daily basis like a cross-country trucker. "

" I do have a really good memory. I mean, like, I can remember all the phone numbers of everybody on the street I grew up on. "

" I'm doomed to act like myself, even when it's inconvenient! "

" I've never contended that I had a really horrible life. "

" I find a great deal of comfort and care in my faith and prayer. I'd sooner do without air than prayer. "

" I believe in God, but even if you don't, you can believe in a self, the person who is innately who you are. Once you fully become that person, then everything you do will be blessed. "

" Success has affected my self-definition in that I have more money. Writers pooh-pooh that idea, but it's a huge deal. "

" Childhood was terrifying for me. A kid has no control. You're three feet tall, flat broke, unemployed, and illiterate. Terror snaps you awake. You pay keen attention. People can just pick you up and move you and put you down. "

" When people suffer, their relationships usually suffer as well. Period. And we all suffer because, as the Buddha says, that's the nature of being human and wanting stuff we don't always get. "

" There are all kinds of things God wants me to do that I'm very obstreperous about. "

" As a memoirist, I strive for veracity. "

" Nobody sounds good writing about your divorce, let's face it. "

" Poetry privileges music and is aesthetically more challenging. Prose privileges information and is emotionally more challenging. "

" Most of the people I write about I'm still in touch with, so I would be loath to make up stuff about them. "

" Young writers often mistakenly choose a certain vein or style based on who they want to be, unconsciously trying to blot out who they actually are. You want to escape yourself. "

" I've been teaching classes on memoirs since 1986, and I've been reading them all my life, and I think that I would like to write a critical book that might have some of those how-to elements in it. "

" Every poem probably has sixty drafts behind it. "

" I have a completely addictive personality. Diet Coke is my last - God, I know people counting days off Diet Coke; I'm such a Diet Cokehead. Now I won't let myself buy it. "

" It's completely through prayer that I came to believe in God. I just sensed a presence south of my neck. "

" For days on end, I avoid the Web, never logging in until about two or three, after I've written all morning. On a good week, I don't go online till after Wednesday, so four or five days might lapse without my checking e-mail. "

" When I got sober, I thought giving up was saying goodbye to all the fun and all the sparkle, and it turned out to be just the opposite. That's when the sparkle started for me. "

" I was a philosophy major as an undergraduate, and I'm just an arrogant little thing. It's hard for me to admit that I can't understand something, let alone not be in charge of it. "

" The failures of other genres to provide an emotional connection with some of their characters and narratives gives memoir a toehold. "

" Poetry is for me Eucharistic. You take someone else's suffering into your body, their passion comes into your body, and in doing that you commune, you take communion, you make a community with others. "

" I'm always terrified when I'm writing. "

" Prose cannot compete with the economy of poetry, the ability to have a full artistic experience in a short period of time. "

" Having a great dad probably permitted me to pal around with guys in a way that some women don't. "

" I don't think I look like the pope's favorite Catholic - at least not under close scrutiny. "