I am reminded that no matter how hard you try, you can never be more than twelve years old with your parents. Parents earnestly try not to inflame, but their comments contain no scale and a strange focus. Discussing your private life with parents is like misguidedly looking at a zit in a car's rearview mirror and being convinced, in the absence of contrast or context, that you have developed combined heat rash and skin cancer.

Only the disenfranchised can party with abandon.

The new world lies before her eyes like an opened chest of treasure, a flock of birds over Africa, a thousand TVs all playing at once.

I like having a beard. My beard changes my face shape and allows me to see in it family members who I love and can't see otherwise.

Forget about being world famous, it's hard enough just getting the automatic doors at the supermarket to acknowledge our existence.

I think individual people are interesting, not really groups of people.

I guess the thing about exposing your heart is that people may not even notice it. Like a flop movie. Or they'll borrow your heart and they'll forget to return it to you.