I flipped back through the pad of paper while I thought about what Stephen Hawking would do next.

Of course food has an important cultural use in families, but there are things that have more important cultural uses in families, and broadening the conversation out simply from what's reasonable also allows in other things.

Flea-Market vendors are frozen mid-haggle. Middle-aged women are frozen in the middle of their lives. The gavels of frozen judges are frozen between guilt and innocence. On the ground are the crystals of the frozen first breaths of babies, and those of the last gasps of the dying.

Succotash my Balzac, dipshiitake.

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

She was so beautiful, like someone who you will never meet, but always dream of meeting, like someone who is too good for you.

There are a lot of things that we crave, there are a lot of things that would make us perhaps more fulfilled in a sensory way that we just say no to.