When The Word 'nostalgia' Was Coined In

Maybe The First Time You Saw Her You Were Ten. She Was Standing In The Sun Scratching Her Legs. Or Tracing Letters In The Dirt With A Stick. Her Hair Was Being Pulled. Or She Was Pulling Someone's Hair. And A Part Of You Was Drawn To Her, And A Part Of You Resisted--wanting To Ride Off On Your Bicycle, Kick A Stone, Remain Uncomplicated. In The Same Breath You Felt The Strength Of A Man, And A Self-pity That Made You Feel Small And Hurt. Part Of You Thought: Please Don't Look At Me. If You Don't, I Can Still Turn Away. And Part Of You Thought: Look At Me.

When You're Younger, It's All Theoretical. It's All Potential. As You Get Older, It Becomes Actual, And Your Life Gets Filled With Unexpected Complexity; Some Of It Asked For, And Some Of It Not. It Becomes Richer, I Find.

I Have A Very Strong Sense Of Architecture In My Novels. But At First It's Sometimes Like Building A Doorknob Before You Have A Door, And A Door Before You Have A Room.

I Knew That To Find And To Feel Yoav Again Would Be Terribly Painful, Because Of What Had Become Of Him, And Because Of What I Knew He Could Ignite In Me, A Vitality That Was Excruciating Because Like A Flare It Lit Up The Emptiness Inside Me And Exposed What I Always Secretly Knew About Myself: How Much Time I'd Spent Being Only Partly Alive, And How Easily I'd Accepted A Lesser Life.

Only Later Did I Come To Understand That To Be A Mother Is To Be An Illusion. No Matter How Vigilant, In The End A Mother Can't Protect Her Child - Not From Pain, Or Horror, Or The Nightmare Of Violence, From Sealed Trains Moving Rapidly In The Wrong Direction, The Depravity Of Strangers, Trapdoors, Abysses, Fires, Cars In The Rain, From Chance.