Also, when on a campaign to convince a stranger that you aren't a few fries short of a Happy Meal, throwing around phrases like "tangentially Swedish" is not the best way to go.

Why Paris? Paris needs no reason. Paris is its own reason.

It was almost funny. Life seemed downright accidental in its brevity, and death a punch line to a lousy joke.

I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.

We heard her come halfway up the stairs, where she must have seen the bedroom light on. Again, the normal parent reaction would have been to say something like, "You had better come out this moment or I am releasing the tiger!" But Debbie was not a normal parent, so we heard her gigle and creep away, saying, "Shhh! Rachel! Come with Mommy! Stuart is busy!

The essay I had to read was called, "An Essay on Criticism" by Alexander Pope. The first challenge was that the essay was, in fact, a very long poem in "heroic couplets". If something is called an essay, it should be an essay.

i miss you so much it's giving me a pain in my pancreas.