“Were all these writers and artists more fragile than ordinary human beings or do we just know their names? It does seem as if there is a peril association with gift, a proclivity to break your brain just as professional skiers may be apt to break their legs as they swoop downward through wind and snow. It may be that to see and tell the story of human error is to dare to expose yourself to the sacred flash of truth that can drive you mad. Or are you mad to try in the first place?”

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“I didn’t care anymore if all the writers in America were more skilled than I. I began to write because I was no longer concerned about my lack of great gift. I would work with whatever lay within. It was a secret, this notebook of mine. I described things. I remembered scenes. I wrote about the child and what she did. I wrote about my mother and my father and my aunts and my uncles. I wrote the stories my mother had told me about her father and his first years on the Lower East Side. I wrote in the supermarket. I wrote while the child napped. I wrote when the child was crayoning or listening to music.”

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