My recipe for bliss on a Friday night consists of a 'New York Times' crossword puzzle and a new episode of 'Homicide;' Saturdays and Sundays are oriented around walks in the woods with the dog, human companion in tow some of the time but not always.

Cottage cheese is one of our culture's most visible symbols of self-denial; marketed honestly, it would appear in dairy cases with warning labels: this substance is self-punitive; ingest with caution.

To a drinker the sensation is real and pure and akin to something spiritual: you seek; in the bottle, you find.

I am shy by nature, a person who's always found something burdensome about human interaction and who probably always will, at least to some degree.

For years, I ate the same foods every day, in exactly the same manner, at exactly the same times.

Before you get a dog, you can't quite imagine what living with one might be like; afterward, you can't imagine living any other way.

When you're starving or wrapped up in a cycle of binge-ing-and-purging, or sexually obsessed with (someone), it is very hard to think about anything else, very hard to see the larger picture of options that is your life, very hard to consider what else you might need or want or fear were you not so intently focused on one crushing passion. I sat in my room every night, with rare exceptions, for three and a half years.