Knee-Jerk Irony: The tendency to make flippant ironic comments as a reflexive matter of course in everyday conversation.

I really do force myself to not be fully engaged with all the technology at once, just because I have an addictive personality and I get too into it.

I curled myself into a ball and cried quietly, doing that thing that only young people can do, namely, feeling sorry for myself. Once you're past thirty you lose that ability; instead of feeling sorry for yourself you turn bitter.

Negative? Moi? I think realistic might be a better word. You mean to tell me we can drive all the way here from L.A. and see maybe ten thousand square miles of shopping malls, and you don't have maybe just the weentsiest inkling that something, somewhere has gone very very cuckoo?

Our conversations are never easy, but as I-we-get older, we are finding that our conversations must bespoken. A need burns inside us to share with others what we are feeling Beyond a certain age, sincerity ceases to feel pornographic. It is as though the coolness that marked out youth is itself a type of retrovirus that can only leave you feeling empty. Full of holes.

Hasn't it been a long time since you had a flying dream?

If I've learned anything in twenty-nine years, it's that every human being you see in the course of a day has a problem that's sucking up at least 70 percent of his or her radar. My gift - bad choice of words - is that I can look at you, him, her, them, whoever, and tell right away what is keeping them awake at night: money; feelings of insignificance; overwhelming boredom; evil children; job troubles; or perhaps death, in one of its many costumes, perched in the wings. What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.