You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness.

I can't count the times that upon telling someone I am vegetarian, he or she responded by pointing out an inconsistency in my lifestyle or trying to find a flaw in an argument I never made. (I have often felt that my vegetarianism matters more to such people than it does to me.)

Time was passing like a hand waving from a train I wanted to be on. I hope you never have to think about anything as much as I think about you.

We were quiet on the car ride home. I turned on the radio and found a station playing "Hey Jude." It was true, I didn't want to make it bad. I wanted to take the sad song and make it better. It's just that I didn't know how.

Words are capable of making experience more vivid, and also of organizing it. They can scare us, and they can comfort us.

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

I brought the birdcages to the windows. I opened the windows, and opened the birdcages. I poured the fish down the drain. I took the dogs and cats downstairs and removed their collars. I released the insects onto the street. And the reptiles. And the mice. I told them, Go. All of you. Go. And they went. And they didn’t come back