The world I describe is about how people live now. It's not about zany people with unlimited, inexplicable funds in an apartment somewhere.

For a long time I wanted to draw, but I could never get the proportions right. My still life sketches were the artistic equivalent of someone who has misjudged the space constraints of a postcard, the handwriting shrinking uncomfortably at the bottom.

I have definitely had experiences where I can feel the shift from simply living my life to being slightly outside of my life and taking notes.

The search for one's first professional job is not unlike a magical love potion: when one wants to fall in love with the next thing one sees, one generally does.

I think that most New Yorkers would object to calling me a New Yorker. I didn't grow up here.

I was the youngest of my entire family so you are tap-dancing to try to get the attention of your older cousins. I really hit my social stride in 6th grade, but before that I was a pretty big dork. You learn how to be amusing and how to work for it.

What annoyed me was that I so often attempted to weasel out of things on purpose, it killed me to do it by accident. It seemed like a waste of whatever detailed lie I was going to have to come up with.