For me, titles are either a natural two-second experience or stressful enough to give you an ulcer. If they don't pop out perfect on the first try, they can be really hard to repair. Or, worse, if the author thinks they pop out perfect, but the publishing house does not agree, it's difficult to shift gears. And then? Then you go insane.

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.

There's just no concept of layering a thick-sleeved sweater under a coat in L.A. A coat is more of a gesture than a necessity. You know, in case the temperature goes down to 55 degrees.

I don't really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don't think of them as a memoir. They're essays; they're not an autobiography.

Sometimes in New York, you're walking down the street and you realize there's a girl walking in front of you whose thighs you could hit a golf ball through, and maybe that makes you depressed.

I wanted to be an archaeologist. But in school you have to take a tremendous amount of statistics for that, and I am not good at statistics. So I hit a real wall with archaeology. It's probably like wanting to be an architect - you think it's all fun and games, and then you have to get out a calculator and you're done.

A pet store is a celebration of dogs' existence and an explosion of options. About cats, a pet store seems to say, 'Here, we couldn't think of anything else.' Cats are the Hanukkah of the animal world in this way. They are feted quietly and happily by a minority, but there's only so much hoopla applicable to them.