I'm not sure I would have anyway, ... If I had been writing it at the time she died, that would have become part of it. It was about a specific period of going crazy and getting over it.

I write entirely to find out what I'm thinking, what I'm looking at, what I see and what it means. What I want and what I fear.

Was it only by dreaming or writing that I could find out what I thought?

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle.

The impulse to write things down is a peculiarly compulsive one, inexplicable to those who do not share it, useful only accidentally, only secondarily, in the way that any compulsion tries to justify itself. I suppose that it begins or does not begin in the cradle. Although I have felt compelled to write things down since I was five years old, I doubt that my daughter ever will, for she is a singularly blessed and accepting child, delighted with life exactly as life presents itself to her, unafraid to go to sleep and unafraid to wake up. Keepers of private notebooks are a different breed altogether, lonely and resistant rearrangers of things, anxious malcontents, children afflicted apparently at birth with some presentiment of loss.

The shock of it was that this time, she had a lot of strength, ... Her husband and I assumed she'd overcome it.