Turning into my father.

As an Italian, tinned spaghetti. As a child, I was once served it at someone’s house. It was quite frightening.

I think that loss of speech, and of understanding of speech, and of understanding of writing, and of coherent writing – these losses will amount to the loss of my mind. I know what this feels like and it has no insides, no internal echo. Mind means talking to oneself. There wouldn't be any secret mind surviving in me.

Dying of the same awful disease that took my mother – a particularly aggressive form of dementia called Pick’s disease.

I don’t care – I won’t be here.

This morning. I had a typical day: got up early, took the dog for a walk, went to the gym for an hour, then wrote for four hours. That makes me a very happy person.

When my mom died, on 18 January this year.

Drop 20lb and lower my cholesterol.

Impatience; the inability to savor the moment.

I had the benefit of some very good high school English teachers. One in particular when I was a senior in high school. I was a jock, okay. I was not a student. Although I enjoyed reading, that was about it as far as academics. But she forced us to read good books and good writers, particularly good American writers. We weren’t too thrilled to do it initially, but she taught us how to do it. Through that, I discovered some of my favorite authors, particularly John Steinbeck. Once I had gone through all of Steinbeck’s books, I realized that I had had a wonderful experience.