After a certain age, you felt a need not to be alone. It grew stronger, like a radio frequency, until finally it was so powerful that you were forced to do something about it.

The generation that had information, but no context. Butter, but no bread. Craving, but no longing.

Being an adult child was an awkward, inevitable position. You went about your business in the world: tooling around, giving orders, being taken seriously, but there were still these two people lurking somewhere who in a split second could reduce you to nothing. In their presence, you were a big-headed baby again, crawling instead of walking.

Both my mother and I have close groups of friends that include other writers, and these friendships are very important to us.

It seemed that everywhere you went, people quickly adapted to the way they had to live, and called it Life.

Being a teacher at a restaurant in the town where you lived was a little like being a TV star.

But this post-college world felt different from everything that had come before it; art was still central, but now everyone had to think about making a living too, and they did so with a kind of scorn for money except as it allowed them to live the way they wanted to live.