You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself.

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.

Our brains are like bonsai trees, growing around our private versions of reality.

The truth is, I wrote a novel when I was 23. It's hideously bad. Truly rotten.

Cohabitation seems a greater leap in cities because it's all the harder to extract oneself if things turn sour. It's what keeps otherwise functional adults living with their mothers.

In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker's party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image.

No affair that begins with such an orchestrated overture can end on a simple note.