The plain state of being human is dramatic enough for anyone; you don't need to be a heroin addict or a performance poet to experience extremity. You just have to love someone.

[H]ow was I supposed to get excited about the oppression of females if they couldn't be trusted to stay upright during the final minutes of a desperately close promotion campaign?

Human beings are millions of things in one day.

Complaining about boring football is a little like complaining about the sad ending of King Lear: it misses the point somehow.

It is a strange paradox that while the grief of football fans(and it is real grief) is private - we each have an individual relationship with our clubs, and I think that we are secretly convinced that none of the other fans understands quite why we have been harder hit than anyone else - we are forced to mourn in public, surrounded by people whose hurt is expressed in forms different from our own.

He has the personality of a child prodigy, but no discernable talent.

Why does reading freak people out so much? Sure, I could be pretty anti-social when we were on the road, but if I was playing a Gameboy hour after hour, no one would be on my case. In my social circle, blowing up space monsters is socially acceptable in a way that American Pastoral isn't.