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.

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.

It was strange to see someone you have only known alone begin interacting with other people, for that somebody known to you disappears and is replaced by a different, more complex, person. You watch him revolve in this new company, revealing new facets, and there is nothing you can do but hope you like these other sides as much as you like the side that seemed whole when it faced only you.

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.

The first night Stephen and I slept together, he whispered numbers into my ear: long, high numbers -- distances between planets, seconds in a life. He spoke as if they were poetry, and they became poetry. Later, when he fell asleep, I leaned over him and watched, trying to picture a mathematician's dreams. I concluded that Stephen must dream in abstract, cool designs like Mondrian paintings.

Unfortunately I have never been good in math. Numbers simply do not interest me or seem as real to me as words.

What if she was meant to be, or could have been, someone important in my life? I think that's what scares me: the randomness of everything. That the people who could be important to you might just pass you by. Or you pass them by.