I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate.

I have a B.A. in Spanish, so briefly I thought that somebody might pay me to speak Spanish badly in another country, like Norway.

A food truce, the picnic suspension of oedipal feeling that permits the generations to love each other at family reunions.

Sometimes, when you're writing sentence by sentence, you're not really sure what footprints you're going to fall into, or what ghosts might appear.

Could we betray our parents by going back to them?

People really get myopic as they get older. We're not a culture that encourages dreaming or distraction. We're not ever good at just being. I remember reading some Adrienne Rich quote where she talks about how important it was just to watch bubbles rise in a glass.

My mom says I'm destined to be the sort of man who uses big words but pronounces them incorrectly.