What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this -- two things: I crave truth. And I lie.

I love writing. I feel ridiculously lucky that this is what I get to do all day.

You don't have to like your family, you don't even have to spend time with them, to know them right down to the bone.

You start admiring someone who's famous for actually doing something---imagine that---and I swear to you I will buy you every item in her entire wardrobe. But over my own dead body will I spend my own time and money turning you into a clone of some brain-dead waste of skin who thinks the pinnacle of achievement is selling her wedding shots to a magazine.

Some people should never meet.

People you knew when you were teenagers, the ones who saw your stupidest haircut and the most embarrassing things you've done in your life, and they still cared about you after all that: they're not replaceable, you know?

We think about mortality so little, these days, except to flail hysterically at it with trendy forms of exercise and high-fiber cereals and nicotine patches.