People often say that when couples are married for a long time, they start to look alike. I don't believe that. But I do believe their sentences start to look alike.

Slowly would be better than not at all.

This is not something insignificant. This is real. This is happening, and this is ours.

I wish I could remember the moment when I was a kid and I discovered that the letters linked into words, and that the words linked to real things. What a revelation that must have been. We don't have the words for it, since we hadn't yet learned the words. It must have been astonishing, to be given the key to the kingdom and see it turn in our hands so easily.

Once you experience enormity, it lingers everywhere you look, and want to be every word you say.

New Yorkers love the bigness -- the skyscrapers, the freedom, the lights. But they also love it when they can carve out some smallness for themselves. When the guy at the corner store knows which newspaper you want. When the barista has your order ready before you open your mouth. When you start to recognize the people in your orbit, and you know that, say, if you're waiting for the subway at eight fifteen on the dot, odds are the redhead with the red umbrella is going to be there too.

Some days are like this. And the only way to get through them is to remember that they are only one day, and that every day ends.