MID-TWENTIES BREAKDOWN: A period of mental collapse occurring in one's twenties, often caused by an inability to function outside of school or structured environments coupled with a realization of one's essential aloneness in the world. Often marks induction into the ritual of pharmaceutical usage.

The capacity for not feeling lonely can carry a very real price, that of feeling nothing at all.

What surprises me about humanity is that in the end such a narrow range of plights defines our moral lives.

Salad bars are like a restaurant's lungs. They soak up the impurities and bacteria in the environment, leaving you with much cleaner air to enjoy.

Death without the possibility of ever changing the world is the same as a life that never was.

Once he entered my life, I promptly forgot all my years of putting on a brave face while browsing at bookstores until closing time, and of having one, two, three beers while watching crime shows and CNN. I completely forgot the hateful sensation of loneliness, like thirst and hunger together pressing on my stomach.

Workshops and seminars are basically financial speed dating for clueless people.