Most people hew the battlements of life from compromise, erecting their impregnable keeps from judicious submissions, fabricating their philosophical drawbridges from emotional retractions and scalding marauders in the boiling oil of sour grapes.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising. I still believe that one can learn to play the piano by mail and that mud will give you a perfect complexion.

Being in love, she concluded, is simply a presentation of our pasts to another individual, mostly packages so unwieldy that we can no longer manage the loosened strings alone.

We grew up founding our dreams on the infinite promise of American advertising.

Look closer and you'll see something extraordinary, mystifying, something real and true. We have never been what we seemed.

Anything incomprehensible has a sexual significance to many people under thirty-five.

I believed I was a salamander, and it seems I am nothing but an impediment.