I felt uncomfortable calling myself a writer until I started with 'The New Yorker,' and then I was like, 'Okay, now you can call yourself that.

Kools and Newports were for black people and lower-class whites. Camels were for procrastinators, those who wrote bad poetry, and those who put off writing bad poetry. Merits were for sex addicts, Salems were for alcoholics, and Mores were for people who considered themselves to be outrageous but really weren't.

I didn't know about the rest of the class, but when Bastille Day eventually rolled around, I planned to stay home and clean my oven.

Being locked up is one thing, but to have no concept of confinement, to be ignorant of its terms and never understand that struggle is useless - that's what hell must be like.

The good thing about England - like, if I were in France, all people would be doing is rubbing my nose in Donald Trump. As if I voted for him. Just rubbing my nose in him. And in England, they'd be rubbing my nose in it too, except for Brexit. So that means they can't rub my nose in anything!

Most movies, I forget about them while I'm watching them. I go every single day. But I've never thought about participating in any way. It's like being at home all day. It was never a goal to me.

It's funny how certain objects convey a message - my washer and dryer, for example. They can't speak, of course, but whenever I pass them they remind me that I'm doing fairly well. "No more laundromat for you," they hum. My stove, a downer, tells me every day that I can't cook, and before I can defend myself my scale jumps in, shouting from the bathroom, "Well, he must be doing _something - _my numbers is off the charts." The skeleton has a much more limited vocabulary, and says only one thing: "You are going to die."