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.

Was he smart enough? Introspective enough? Was it just enough to love him, or should I attach myself to someone who seemed farther ahead of me, someone smarter and more ambitious than me, who'd be sure to carry me along into the version of adulthood I thought I should be striving for?

When you quit drinking you stop waiting.

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

There's something about sober living and sober thinking, about facing long afternoons without the numbing distraction of anesthesia that disabuses you of the belief in the externals, shows you that strength and hope come not from circumstances or the acquisition of things, but from the simple accumulation of active experience, from gritting the teeth and checking the items off the list, one by one, even if it's painful and you're afraid.

Consumerism thrives on emotional voids.

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