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

Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there.

Suburbia is too close to the country to have anything real to do and too close to the city to admit you have nothing real to do.

They say it's not the snoring itself but those anxiety-packed moments in between snorts. It's the waiting for the nasal passages of the person lying beside you to strike again. And strike it always does. In the dark, almost against your will, you produce that special glare reserved for people who cannot control their own behaviour.

Everything in New York seems to merit preserving. If it's not historical, it's personal. If it's not personal, it's cultural. But you can't. You can't save everything. You just have to pack it up in your brain and take it with you when you go.

Kids across the country have grown up accepting the idea that no one can harm your family if at least one of its adult members is in the shower. No one knows why.

As most New Yorkers have done, I have given serious and generous thought to the state of my apartment should I get killed during the day.