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.

Naturally, our own irrational demands strike us as having the force of needs, while other people's needs strike us as capricious indulgences.

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.

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

It might pay to be resilient, if this was all being vulnerable and skinless got you. People didn’t stop and cluck over damage done unless you made it worth their while. Indeed, maybe it was time to rethink this whole salvation business. Or maybe I was less desperate, less teetering on the edge than I cared to admit. Now, that was a refreshing possibility.

Everyone lies about sex, more or less, to themselves if not to others, to others if not to themselves, exaggerating its importance or minimizing its pull.

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