I have a hard time defending the production of candy, given that it is basically crack for children and makes them dependent in unwholesome ways.

We are all, in the private kingdom of our hearts, desperate for the company of a wise, true friend. Someone who isn’t embarrassed by our emotions, or her own, who recognizes that life is short and all that we have to offer, in the end, is love.

Football is the kind of game where you have to really segregate kids from the general population and kind of colonize their minds. It's more intense and demands more than other sports. And this is why the folks who are involved (as players, coaches, boosters, fans) are so much more devoted to it. It's really a cult, when you think about it.

To look at the work of your peers, and learn how to explain with kindness and precision, the nature of their mistakes is, in fact, how you learn to diagnose your own work.

I love men, the restlessness of their corrupted souls, the way they hide their heavy, murderous hearts, their sudden delicacies and small shocking acts of tenderness.

The answer is that we don't choose our freaks, they choose us.

It is certainly true that cooking is therapeutic, creative and all those other faintly creepy self-helpish words. I would love to tell you that learning to cook was part of my journey toward actualization. I would love to tell Oprah this. I would love to tell Oprah this while weeping. But I learned to cook for a much simpler reason: in the abject hope that people would spend time with me if I put good things in their mouth. It is, in other words (like practically everything else I do), a function of my desperation for emotional connection and acclaim.