That's when I began drinking coffee. I was hung up on every little thing. I loved Paris, and felt straightaway at home. Not to be grandiose, but it seemed like all the city had been waiting for me.

I was 23 when I learned how to cook; I grew up around the same time. It was precisely then that Thanksgiving started to mean something more. Growing up, Christmas was always about me, and eventually you, when I finally started to enjoy the giving part. But Thanksgiving is always about us.

I think there's tons of life and excitement in Paris. There are lots of old people and young people creating sexy new culture, but they're having to do it in the middle of a theme park. Paris is so dedicated to preserving its sense of itself, "we were great once upon a time," that it's hard for people who are making work right now to have to struggle in this sort of museum.

I never had the idea of moving to Paris and becoming something. I liked the idea of living in Paris because it seemed to have so many parts of life I really enjoyed. The people there seemed to prize literature and art, food and drinking, a more hedonistic way of living. My ambition was to be cosmopolitan. I grew up in the suburbs. I went to college in Maine. I had a dream in my head that if you wanted to be the most urbane, living-life-to-the-fullest kind of person, Paris was the place to be.

That's when I began drinking coffee. I was hung up on every little thing. I loved Paris, and felt straightaway at home. Not to be grandiose, but it seemed like all the city had been waiting for me.

I like to find music that shares a rhythm with the sentences I'm working on. And though I'll probably regret saying this, I think some songs actually don't sound too bad when they're played through lousy speakers.

And all Halloween candy pales next to candy corn, if only because candy corn used to appear, like the Great Pumpkin, solely on Halloween.