I thought that, too. For the first eight months, all I wanted was to be with loved ones and hold hands and talk. It has added a fierce intensity to my life, and that's been pleasurable. It sounds very banal, but having cancer does put things into perspective. I laugh a lot, which is partly my black sense of humor, but also I think it is good to be in contact with life and death.
Many people spend their lives defending themselves against the notion that life is melodrama.
I think it is good not to damp down these conflicts and dramas and agonize. You get terrific energy from facing them in an active and conscious way. For me, writing is a way of paying as much attention as possible. She now says she regrets all the years spent writing the essays for which she became renowned on subjects ranging from the esthetics of camp to Cuba, Vietnam and political radicalism. She graduated from high school at 15, married at 17, graduated from the University of Chicago at 18 and went on to graduate work in philosophy at Harvard.