I always looked forward to being an adult, because I thought the adult world was, well—adult. That adults weren’t cliquey or nasty, that the whole notion of being cool, or in, or popular would case to be the arbiter of all things social, but I was beginning to realize that the adult world was as nonsensically brutal and socially perilous as the kingdom of childhood.

I often feel like I want to think something but I can't find the language that coincides with the thoughts, so it remains felt, not thought. Sometimes I feel like I'm thinking in Swedish without knowing Swedish.

Sometimes I envy religious people for the comfort of believing. It would make everything so much easier.

It made me very sad, that question. Sad and defeated. Because I knew she knew why I was thinking about that woman-I was thinking about my own tendencies toward aloneness and I thought I could end up like that woman, with a bird perhaps, or a dog-probably a dog, I know birds are supposed to make good pets but I think there's something creepy about them-but alone with a life that didn't touch or overlap with anyone else's, a sort of hermetically sealed life.

They're both about the correct or proper way to do something. There is a correct and proper way to use words and there is a correct and proper way to behave with other people. And I behaved improperly with John and feel bad, so I compensate by obsessing with language, which is easier to control than behavior.

Interacting with other people does not come naturally to me; it is a strain and requires effort, and since it does not come naturally I feel like I am not really myself when I make that effort. I feel fairly comfortable with my family, but even with them I sometimes feel the strain of not being alone.

I hate stand-up comics; I think funny is something you are, not something you desperately try to be in front of a roomful of obnoxious people.