The truth is, I started writing because I stopped smoking

The truth is, I started writing because I stopped smoking and I had to do something. By which I mean that I had to find some serviceable, day-to-day way to make some sense of the big swamp that sloshes around in my head—the swamp that sloshes around in each head from birth.

I suppose you could say that’s the basic task of being alive—mapping the stuff inside your head, which itself I suppose is a constantly changing representation of you plus the whole rest of the world, and of how those things fit together.

DEBORAH EISENBERG