We all deserve to be congratulated, but sadly that would mean there's no one left to do the congratulating.

Sometimes we don't know what we want until we don't get it.

It's never good to fall in love with someone whom you'd have to stab in the eyeballs to elicit a response.

In New York and L.A., there is sort of that silent competition to be on the cutting edge of something. You end up having a conversation with how the world receives your work, especially if you are writing narrative, not fiction. Sometimes it is an awkward conversation. It's like group therapy.

But now my problems had been set loose. They could be anywhere at any time and I was just like everyone else I knew: almost positive that there was something profoundly and undiagnosably wrong with me.

and there's something about having an especially different name that makes it difficult to imagine what you would be like as a Jennifer.

There's an 'Everything must go!' emotional liquidation feel to the end of your twenties, isn't there? What will happen if we turn thirty and we're not 'ready?' You don't feel entirely settled in any aspect of your life, even if you are on paper.