I'm sorry for my inability to let unimportant things go, for my inability to hold on to the important things.

I am doing something I hate for you. This is what it means to be in love.

I didn't intend to write about totems or people searching. I tried not to constrain myself, and this is what I ended up with. There's this great Auden quote: "I look at what I write so I can see what I think."

The French, who love their dogs, sometimes eat their horses. The Spanish, who love their horses, sometimes eat their cows. The Indians, who love their cows, sometimes eat their dogs.

Sometimes people who seem good end up being not as good as you might have hoped, you know?

The bruises go away, and so does how you hate, and so does the feeling that everything you receive from life is something you have earned.

Just to be a functioning adult in the world, we develop all of these layers of protection. When we see homeless people, we don't cry, even though homeless people probably deserve our tears - you know, it's a horrible thing.