For years, I kept a Post-it note above my desk. WORK NOT LOVE! was what it said. It seemed a sturdier kind of happiness.

And that phrase - 'sleeping like a baby.' Some blonde said it blithely on the subway the other day. I wanted to lie down next to her and scream for five hours in her ear.

Some women make it look so easy, the way they cast ambition off like an expensive coat that no longer fits.

A thought experiment courtesy of the Stoics. If you are tired of everything you possess, imagine that you have lost all these things.

One of the odd things about being a writer is that you never reach a point of certainty, a point of mastery where you can say, Right. Now I understand how this is done.

But now it seems possible that the truth about getting older is that there are fewer and fewer things to make fun of until finally there is nothing you are sure you will never be.

You think you want the blue skies, the open road, but really you want the tunnel, you want to know how the story ends.