And pity--people who inspire it in you are actually very powerful people. To get someone else to take care of you, to feel sorry for you--that takes a lot of strength, smarts, manipulation. Very powerful people.

In the two months I had also dated Justin Fellowes, this guy in my Spanish class, though after three weeks we decided we should "see other people," which in my case was a joke, but it beat hearing him remark on everything I ate. 'I don't know why girls are always on a diet,' he'd say when I ordered a Diet Coke, and 'You should watch your starch intake' when I had a muffin.

I don’t know why we do it. But sometimes we just swim straight for the net.

Although I love snow, it messes things up terribly around Seattle, with all of our hills. I worry about my loved ones driving.

I began to learn the importance of lifting things up and looking underneath.

Another person is, at the heart of it, unknowable. And if you cannot know a person enough to always guess what they’re capable of, you certainly cannot know them enough to hold them in your hands, to control their behavior, to fight, manipulate, cajole or nurse or soothe them into doing what they should or shouldn’t. People will do what they will do. The trick is admitting your own helplessness about that little fact.

Empathy took the edge off, and the truth is, we need our edge. Our edge is trying to speak to us, and we are too, too good at shutting it up.