All at once, I couldn’t figure out why I was methodically tossing a spherical object through a toroidal object. It seemed like the stupidest thing I could possibly be doing.

"Why are breakfast food breakfast foods?" I asked them. "Like, why don't we have curry for breakfast?" "Hazel, eat." "But why?" I asked. "I mean seriously: How did scrambled eggs get stuck with breakfast exclusivity? You can put bacon on a sandwich without anyone freaking out. But the moment your sandwich has an egg, boom, it's a breakfast sandwich."

...I will continue to underscore that I don't think authorial intent is all that important to a reading experience, and I certainly don't think the job of reading is to divine authorial intent.

Don't lie to anyone, but particularly don't lie to millennials. They just know. They can smell it. Be yourself: if you're old, be old. If you don't know anything about pop culture, don't pretend to know anything about pop culture. When you credit teenagers with intelligence and emotional sophistication, they respond intelligently and with emotional sophistication.

No reason to be angry. Anger just distracts from the all-encompassing sadness.

What a treacherous thing to believe that a person is more than a person.

maybe she'd been scared of being paralyzed by fear again.