I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth.

The best thing about the iPhone is this that tells me where I am all the time. Theres never a need to feel lost anymore.

If you're not fascinated by Korea yet, you damn well should be. The most innovative country on earth deserves a hilarious and poignant account on the order of Euny Hong's The Birth of Korean Cool. Her phat beats got Gangnam Style and then some.

I feel safe with him because he is so not my ideal and I feel like I can be myself because I'm not in love with him.

The greatest books in Russian literature are satires. Gogol's Dead Souls, for example, is a very over-the-top satire about life in Russia. I think it's the thing we do best.

I was really not a good student, and I felt that shame every day. That's one of the reasons I started smoking pot and drinking daily.

You want to read a book? That requires introspection. It requires time away from people and time away from the constant need to communicate and to connect.