It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

What was more humiliating, I wondered: having to beg for someone's cold chicken bones or being offered them?

There are moments when it frightens us, threatening to expose us as inauthentic. Well, the big-time impostors we read about in literature run this risk constantly, flirting with destruction, not just humiliation or embarrassment. It's a spectacle that we can't help but find compelling, and it involves a certain level of courage that we sneakily admire, perhaps.

The lines we draw that make us who we are are potent by virtue of being non-negotiable, and even, at some level, indefensible.

Requesting permission from someone to be honest is really a way of accusing the other person of being so demanding or overbearing that you couldn't be honest all along.

I feel like my head is finally the right size. I feel like it finally fits around my mind.

I preferred that my bad dreams be vague.