I don’t know where to start,” one [writing student] will wail. Start with your childhood, I tell them. Plug your nose and jump in, and write down all your memories as truthfully as you can....

The move away from writing poetry was gradual. It was a gentle slope into a muddy pond; it was a collection of choices. There was no one thing that took the pen from my hand....

Psychologists suggest that we must reach back at least three generations to look for clues whenever we begin untangling the emotional legacy of any one family’s history.

While some people are good at painting, playing an instrument or singing, I have been told more than once I am good at storytelling. I hope that you enjoy my stories as I recall them.

a little inflammation” apparently qualifies as sound diagnosis.

This book tells my story. I’m writing it in Ireland, in a house on a hillside. The house sits low in the landscape between a holy well and the site of an Iron Age dwelling....

Change the world so that nothing else is changed.

As the lights fade to a distant glow, I look back toward the city and imagine, somewhere in all of those lives, a little girl who is a lot like me. Maybe she rides in...

I recount as this journey begins where I rest to gather the tale from thissame old house resting on the hill, leaving me a view of a carnival once seen from just across the tracks....

We look into our hearts and see objectivity; we look into our minds and see rationality; we look into our beliefs and see reality.

But, Mom, don’t you remember your promise?” If I did, it would be a way of asking for something, and asking my mother for something was always dangerous because of the risk of disappointment.

My father’s haunting memories of war had been transformed into my own haunting memories. Such is the power of war and memory.

Chris didn’t need to learn how to conquer fear. He had to embrace it, walk with it and listen to it.

Everyone’s a knucklehead at one point or another.

Suicide is a form of murder— premeditated murder. It isn’t something you do the first time you think of doing it. It takes some getting used to. And you need the means, the opportunity, the...

What we dedicate today is not a memorial to war, rather it’s a tribute to the physical and moral courage that makes heroes out of farm and city boys and that inspires Americans in every...

Maybe it’s not about having a beautiful day, but about finding beautiful moments. Maybe a whole day is just too much to ask. I could choose to believe that in every day, in all things,...

There is, of course, always the personal satisfaction of writing down one’s own experiences so they may be saved, caught and pinned under glass, hoarded against the winter of forgetfulness. Time has been cheated a...

Where are you from? New York?””Weird you picked up on that,” she said, “I’ve been gone from there for so long.”Like a couple of decades could dilute that accent.

The point, I decided, wasn’t to have the autobiography or even the memories. The point was who I became when I wrote.

The thought of killing myself had slowed me down to five miles per hour. The thought of killing someone else stopped me completely.

He was the one I compared all others to.

Ignore the misery. Custom invites you to ignore the misery.”SHOW YOUR TONGUE

This memoir is one of the most brutally honest books I’ve ever read. You will grow to believe, and cheer on, this flawed hero as he gains a liberating knowledge of himself.

Is that the ultimate need? To secure some agent to act as a salve, a bandage, a cover-up, concealer over the black eye, as opposed to facing the issue head on. Nobody wants to address...

[Memory]… is a system of near-infinite complexity, a system that seems designed for revision as much as for replication, and revision unquestionably occurs. Details from separate experiences weave together, so that the rememberer thinks of...

From my first stab at second base, I became obsessively concerned for my vaginal upkeep. I began shaving the day after I felt my first tongue down my throat. The first buzz was a disaster,...

Sex is not a wizard, whatever magical-seeming properties it might possess in its better forms. If your friend says to you, “You’re being mean, you need to get laid,” your problem is not sex. Your...

Haunted by demons of the past, hounded by demons not yet met, the nevermore and evermore left her little peace.” ~A Tale of Two Women

Another note to self; turn cellphone to silent when you’re trying to be sneaky.

And even though people like to furrow their brow like they suspect you’re not being honest about yourself, the truth is that they worry that you’re not serving their idea of you.

Memory is each man’s own last measure, and for some, the only achievement.

I feel about Photoshop the way some people feel about abortion. It is appalling and a tragic reflection on the moral decay of our society…unless I need it, in which case, everybody be cool.

The first night in the hospital with a snuffling baby girl, I learned that my family was not the only thing that had expanded. There was now a whole new world of opportunities for judgment...

After giving it some thought, I’ve decided to name my monkey mind Ricky Bobby. I was thinking about Latin names like Javier, but I don’t want to make my jumping, distractable self sound mysterious and...

My father has the proper degrees and framed pictures on the walls, though they’re mostly taped over with photos of children, family and friends. Images from the past and present and trips and experiences combined...

Staring at my smoldering hot date, her husband stands tall for the first time in a decade, adjusting his toupee while flashing a horrid green toothy grin that looks more like a Steven Hawkins muscle...

My professional life had started and here I was at a professional dinner full of uninhibited drinking.

So long as governments set the example of killing their enemies, private individuals will occasionally kill theirs.

During these three months I have gone through much; I mean, I have gone through much in myself; and now there are the things I am going to see and go through. There will be...

I have this beast. He comes and goes at will.Silence.He’s very powerful.Silence.He has control over me.Silence.I want to come and go at will.Silence.I want to be the powerful one.

That’s the thing about parents, I’m beginning to realize. You don’t have to see them all that much to imitate them.

So, I heard you won Ho of the Year.” Well when you put it like that it didn’t sound like such an accomplishment.

We had our family patterns and were quite comfortable in them, which made it even more shocking when, just after his eightieth birthday, Papa began bringing up his time as a prisoner of war in...

I looked up “skin” in the encyclopedia and confirmed that, sure enough, it is the human body’s largest organ, a fact that suggests our surfaces are critical to who we are, not just the gateway...

These memories are part of my heritage, the fabric of my personality, and as real to me as the land itself.

Now, through an act as simple as walking across a stage and collecting an empty plastic folder representing a degree, our stock had plummeted to nothing, the wretched leavings of some cosmic Ponzi scheme. A...

Recollection, I have found, is usually about half invention…

You had nightmares every night for a long time and screamed in Korean words, but we didn’t know what they meant. I asked someone who knew Korean, and he said it was um-ma um-ma, the...

I used to teach at an abused children’s home. I told the kids, “You all have a manure pile of memories. Nothing you can do about that. Now you can drown in the stink or...