Much as I try to disguise myself, there is never a time when I'm not aware of being overweight.

It was through reading that I discovered the crucial, even sacrosanct place the rituals of drinking held in the American imagination - the ingenious way alcohol seemed to lubricate everything from onerous chitchat to self-conscious sexual advances.

Much as I try to disguise myself, there is never a time when I'm not aware of being overweight.

Then again, as those who suffer from it know, intractable depression creates a planet all its own, largely impermeable to influence from others except as shadow presences, urging you to come out and rejoin the world, take in a movie, go out for a bite, cheer up.

I see depression as an exponentially developed version of a human condition. Meaning I always think in the end it's humanizing. People who never suffer from depression I find suspect. I assume Donald Trump is not a sufferer from depression.

My mother is the source of my unease in the world and thus the only person who can make me feel at home in the world.

There's something stubborn about families, unhappy ones in particular: they outlive themselves, and then they live on.