Part of me believes that love is more valuable when you have to work for it.

There is no such thing as too ordinary to write about, whether that's life or a scene in a novel. What's interesting to people, whether it's memoir or fiction, is the truth.

[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?

The problem with not having anybody to tell you what to do, I understood, is that there was nobody to tell you what not to do.

Most everybody had made at least one bad, drunken decision in their lives. Called an ex at two in the morning. Or perhaps has a little too much to drink on a second date and wept inconsolably while revealing how simply damaged one was, while nonetheless retaining an uncommonly large capacity for love. That kind of thing was, while regrettable, at least comprehensible. But waking up with someone generationally inappropriate, like your grandfather's best buddy?

I hate news and information and anything that threatens to puncture the bubble of oblivion in which I live.

I did not consider him to be any kind of a genius. I considered him deeply lacking in the area that mattered most in life. Star quality.