My hands tend to be full enough dealing with people who hate me for who I am. Concentrate too hard on the millions of people who hate you for what you are and you're likely to turn into one of those unkempt, sloppy dressers who sag beneath the weight of the two hundred political buttons they wear pinned to their coats and knapsacks.

After the trial, I watched as another female pathologist collected maggots from a spinal column found in the desert. There was a decomposed head, too, and before leaving work she planned to simmer it and study the exposed cranium for contusions. I was asked to pass this information along to the chief medical examiner, and, looking back, I perhaps should have chosen my words more carefully. 'Fire up the kettle,' I told him. 'Ol'-fashioned skull boil at five p.m.

You can't brace yourself for famine if you've never known hunger.

The way Trump talks about Obama: presidents don't do that! What we're seeing now is a whole new level of vulgarity. I'm really hoping that it's not the rule from here on out. It's really distressing for me to witness this. I really hope we don't have to throw all decency out the window, just because Trump's president.

If finding an apartment is like falling in love, buying one is like proposing on your first date and agreeing not to see each other until the wedding.

One thing I like about the United States, and I kind of miss about the United States, is there's an election coming up here in England, but no one's going to have a sign in front of their house. Nobody's going to wear buttons. And in France, same thing. In America I like that people have signs and buttons and bumper stickers. Sometimes you'll smile at someone from a distance, then you'll get up close and you'll see their pin, and you're like, "Oh my god. I wasted a smile on you?"

I would start by writing to an adult, maybe a high school teacher, or maybe an aunt or uncle, and writing and telling them why you want to go to a particular university. That's probably what you would actually sound like. Then write your letter to the university, and put those 2 versions in front of you, and look at the difference between those 2 things.