I wish I could say again that I was like James Joyce, who worked things out, or Hemingway, who just sculpted those sentences. For me, it was my method of writing that led me to it. Sitting with a notebook and a pen writing on the right-hand page whatever story I wanted to tell, and making notes on the left-hand page about ideas coming to me for future reference. And I wrote 19 or 20 pages of Angela’s Ashes, which is in the past tense, describing my mother and father coming to New York. And on the left page I wrote one day — I knew the next day I wanted to get to my earliest memories and start my story. My story. And I wrote, “I’m in a playground on Claussen Avenue in Brooklyn with my brother Malachy. He’s two. I’m three. We’re on the seesaw. He goes up. I go down. He goes up. I go down. I get off. Malachy comes down, crashes, bites his tongue and there’s blood.” That was my earliest memory. And the next day I picked that up in the present tense with the perspective of the three-year-old, me, and it felt comfortable and I continued that way. I just — it was a glove that I put on.