There's a certain kind of conversation you have from time to time at parties in New York about a new book. The word "banal" sometimes rears its by-now banal head; you say "underedited," I say "derivative." The conversation goes around and around various literary criticisms, and by the time it moves on one thing is clear: No one read the book; we just read the reviews.

The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.

New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.

When I'm falling, my girlfriends are my soft landing.

The absence on the panel of anyone who could become pregnant accidentally or discover her salary was five thousand dollars a yearless than that of her male counterpart meant there was a hole in the consciousness of the committee that empathy, however welcome, could not entirely fill.

People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.

It often seems, looking back, that the unexpected comes to define us, the paths we didn't see coming and may have wandered down by mistake. The older we get the more willing we are to follow those, to surprise ourselves.