Only now do I understand the war against boredom, the lost cause of empty hours, of empty days and nights.

Shyness is when you turn your head away from something you want.

While it is always possible to wake a person who's sleeping, no amount of noise will wake a person who is pretending to be asleep.

Anyway, the fascinating thing was that I read in National Geographic that there are more people alive now than have died in all of human history. In other words, if everyone wanted to play Hamlet at once, they couldn’t, because there aren’t enough skulls!

But what she was really trying to say was this: I like music better than anything in the world, after you.

Instead of singing in the shower, I would write out the lyrics of my favourite songs, the ink would turn the water blue or red or green, and the music would run down my legs.

Just about every children's book in my local bookstore has an animal for its hero. But then, only a few feet away in the cookbook section, just about every cookbook includes recipes for cooking animals. Is there a more illuminating illustration of our paradoxical relationship with the nonhuman world?