It happened this way: I fell in love and then, because the love was ruining everything I cared about, I had to fall out.

Dogs are fantasies that don't disappoint.

I've always been drawn to solitude, felt a kind of luxurious relief in its self-generated pace and rhythms.

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.

The dog’s agenda is simple, fathomable, overt: I want. “I want to go out, come in, eat something, lie here, play with that, kiss you. There are no ulterior motives with a dog, no mind games, no second-guessing, no complicated negotiations or bargains, and no guilt trips or grudges if a request is denied.

Me, I walk along and feel quietly defensive, a recluse in the Land of We. That's quite the loaded word, 'we.

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.