The Schnauzer listens to jazz. I listen to jazz because he likes it, and I have even gone to jazz concerts with him, but truthfully I would rather listen to retarded children pounding on pan lids with wooden spoons.

My brother was born without taste or the desire to be professionally lit.

I saw a monkey walking on a leash and thought it was an ugly foreign child.

[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?

But she did love him. I believe it. I know exactly how that is. To love somebody who doesn't deserve it. Because they are all you have. Because any attention is better than no attention.

No matter what I've written, someone somewhere has come up to me and said, "Me too." The truth can be offensive, but it's always nourishing, in a way. You recognize it. You can feel it. And even if [readers] think, "My god, I would never get in those situations," within those ridiculous circumstances that I have created for myself, they know the way I respond is probably what they would do too.

Life would be fabric-softener, tuna-salad-on-white, PTA-meeting normal.