It seemed more and more like something out of a children's book - the butterfly that followed the little girl all the way home to her fifth-floor walk-up. How above-the-law children's books are. Hansel and Gretel (littering, breaking and entering), Rumpelstiltskin (forced labor), Snow White (conspiracy to commit murder), Rapunzel (breach of contract).

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

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.

I think it's hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

You feel like telling him you're not single in the way that he thinks you're single. After all, you have yourself. I think a lot of humor is about distracting yourself. Pretend you're not trying to make it funny. Because for some reason the effort to be funny smells like sulphur in our culture.

The nursery rhyme ends when a spider comes along and frightens Miss Muffet straight off her tuffet. I have wondered about what kind of lesson this is for a young girl. If you're eating your curds and whey and a spider comes along, I don't think there's anything wrong with picking up a newspaper, smashing it, and going back to your breakfast.

Picture it in your mind's nostril: you get in a cab in time to catch twin thugs named Vomit and Cologne assaulting a defenseless pine-tree air freshener.