Have you ever been to a picnic? And someone blows up a balloon, and everyone starts tossing it around, and it's always just about to touch the ground, but someone always gets there just in time to tap it back up? That balloon, that's God, the very best in all of us, the kindness, the heavy petting, Funny Girl! ...Evil bores me. It's just one note. It doesn't sing! Oh, of course life sucks! It always will. So why not make the most of it?

Whenever I stumble over my own feet, or blurt out a thought that makes no sense at all, or leave the house wearing one pattern too many, I always think, 'It's okay, I'm from New Jersey.' I love New Jersey, because it's not just an all-purpose punch line, but probably a handy legal defense, as in 'Yes, I shot my wife because I thought she was Bigfoot, but I'm from New Jersey.'

I work sometimes from outlines, which are immediately abandoned. Sometimes, when I'm trying to find the characters, I'll sketch things out a bit. Sometimes, outlines help me aim a little bit, but I tend to find it's usually much more interesting, especially with the first draft, to spew it onto the page. I used to get very nervous that, if I write this first rough draft and I die that night, whoever finds it might think that I thought it was good. For me, it's much more important to get some general shape onto the page and later take all the time I need to refine it, fix it, and rewrite it.

Because there’s a clock attached to every beautiful woman. From the second she comes into her own, she begins to decline, because she begins to age. Aging is every beautiful woman’s kryptonite. And so, yes, it’s ridiculous and no, you don’t have much time and of course it’s not fair. Those three statements are the essence of beauty.

Dysmorphia is when someone looks in the mirror, and sees something else. While I studied my own whatever I was, I decided that maybe everyone has at least a touch of dysmorphia; maybe it's impossible for anyone to ever truly know what they look like.

I think people who make checklists are the most miserable and alone because they are looking for the perfect Entenmann's that is delicious and has no calories. Please, you want a brunette with a sense of humor, a doctorate and HIV-negative status? Good luck, honey. Love isn't so frequent that you can put conditions on it.

I just hate that gay role models are supposed to be just like straight people, as if even straight people are like that.