Was this the big one or was this the small tremor, the warning? Does it get better - does the sensation of being in a dream underwater go away?

My mind leaps to my theory about presidents - that there are two kinds, ones who have a lot of sex and the others who start wars. In short - and don't quote me, because this is an incomplete expression of a more complex premise - I believe blow jobs prevent war.

Sometimes you can do things for others that you can't do for yourself.

Books tell you more about their owners than the owners do.

What draws me to family... if I were a psychiatrist, I'd say an enormous amount of unresolved personal material. If I were an anthropologist, I'd say families are at the root of social structures - they shape our identity, our belief systems - and so I find them fascinating. Also, I love the idea that families have narratives that are essentially the family story that is passed along generation to generation - and the rifts start when people question the story.

I'm feeling how profoundly my family disappointed me and in the end how I retreated, how I became nothing, because that was much less risky than attempting to be something, to be anything in the face of such contempt.

Birthday parties make me nervous as hell. They're one of those things where you're forced to be happy. And even if you're totally depressed, you're got to pretend you're glad you were born, regardless of the fact that getting older means you're closer to dying.