I wish the whole day were like breakfast, when people are still connected to their dreams, focused inward, and not yet ready to engage with the world around them. I realized this is how I am all day; for me, unlike other people, there doesn't come a moment after a cup of coffee or a shower or whatever when I suddenly feel alive and awake and connected to the world. If it were always breakfast, I would be fine.

I knew my mother was right, but that didn't change the way I felt about things. People always think that if they can prove they're right, you'll change your mind.

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

New York is strange in the summer. Life goes on as usual but it’s not, it’s like everyone is just pretending, as if everyone has been cast as the star in a movie about their life, so they’re one step removed from it. And then in September it all gets normal again.

I thought the best thing to do would be nothing, and in that way things couldn’t get any worse.

She had all the best things wrong with her—incest, insanity, drug addiction, bulimia, alopecia: you name it. All the perfect stuff for a memoir. She’s so lucky.

One man’s nonsense is another man’s sense.