It has been said that the reason we establish relationships is to assure ourselves of a witness to our lives.

I think we have to get beyond the idea that we have to categorize people.

What's sad about not eating is the experience, whether at a family reunion or at midnight by yourself in a greasy spoon under the L tracks. The loss of dining, not the loss of food.

In these days of high-tech video games, it's remarkable that kids once got incredibly thrilled while pushing little metal racing cars around a cardboard track: The toy car was yours, and you invested it with importance and enhanced it with fantasy and pitied it because it was small, like you were. Such games were weapons against the ennui of endless Saturdays.

We feel the same emotions for our ideas as we do for the real world, which is why we can cry while reading a book, or fall in love with movie stars.

Why has Scandinavia been producing such good thrillers? Maybe because their filmmakers can't afford millions for CGI and must rely on cheaper elements like, you know, stories and characters.

There is a movie called “Fargo” playing right now. It is a masterpiece. Go see it. If you, under any circumstances, see “Little Indian, Big City,” I will never let you read one of my reviews again.