I suppose home is, for me, more of a state of mind. It's really more of about being where I want to be with people I care about.

[Christmas] holidays are a heavy, heavy time. We make light of them with our red and green and our stockings and candy canes, but people think heavy thoughts over the holidays because that's when you're thinking about family. Are we close? Or are we not as close as other people?

Everybody in recovery smokes. If you don't like smoking, don't even bother trying to get sober. Just stay drunk.

As I sat in the hot, salty water, I thought, 'No wonder Mr. Bubble always gives me a urinary tract infection and hives.' Mr. Bubble was for common people. Mr. Bubble was for my so-called brother, their true child. I was a Vanderbilt. I should bathe in condiments and seasonings.

I could write another collection of personal essays from what has happened to me in the last year alone. I don't seek out my material - it finds me. I am magnetic, somehow.

The reason I know what we are to each other is because we fight freely and almost constantly, about even the smallest thing. In fact, once we didn't speak for an entire week because he didn't like the way I loaded his dishwasher...I can't decide if we're exact opposites, or somehow exactly the same except for minor cosmetic differences. I do know that all of his friends hate me and all of my friends hate him. We drive each other crazy in ways that nobody else can even touch. We never bore each other. And we both realize what a rare thing this is.

I think people might think, oh, I don't want to approach the big famous author because it's embarrassing, but then they think for two seconds about it and realize, this is, like, a toilet bowl reader.