I like to try to do a little work before I do anything in the morning, even if it's a paragraph.

It is my belief that people who speak of high school with a sugary fondness are bluffing away early-onset Alzheimer's.

Friendship is a Spackle in itself. You'll forgive your friends a lot, and if you're a woman, you'll forgive your straight male friends even more. They represent the possibility of mutual toleration between the sexes, a keyhole into the mind of the Other, and the promise of one day meeting someone just like them except that you want to sleep with them.

I hope to one day co-sign a lease with another person but, well, it doesn't plague me that I have yet to do so. Put it this way: I've never had to violently tug at my own pillow at 2 A.M. to get myself to stop snoring.

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.

I write on weekends, on vacation, and, really - on deadline and on my floor. Both terrible for the back.

My A-number one visceral fear is speed. More than knives or snakes or confined spaces. Speed. I won't even go on a motor boat if I can help it.