A human being can spend only so much time outside her comfort zone before she realizes she is still tethered to it.

I can't see the forest through the trees, except the trees are people.

The search for one's first professional job is not unlike a magical love potion: when one wants to fall in love with the next thing one sees, one generally does.

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

When it seems impossible that a deep connection with another person could just go away instead of changing form. It seems impossible that you will one day look up and say the words "I used to date someone who lived in that building," referring to a three-year relationship. As simple as if it was a pizza place that is now a dry cleaner's. It happens. Keep walking.

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).

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.