Writing gives you the illusion of control, and then you realize it's just an illusion, that people are going to bring their own stuff into it.
I haven't the slightest idea how to change people, but I still keep a long list of prospective candidates just in case I should ever figure it out.
At first, writing for The New Yorker was very scary to me. I couldn't imagine anything that I would write in that typeface.
Sometimes the sins you haven't committed are all you have left to hold onto.
Everyone looks retarded once you set your mind to it.
Like all of my friends, she's a lousy judge of character.
We were not a hugging people. In terms of emotional comfort it was our belief that no amount of physical contact could match the healing powers of a well made cocktail.
If you aren't cute, you may as well be clever.
Every day we're told that we live in the greatest country on earth. And it's always stated as an undeniable fact: Leos are born between July 23 and August 22, fitted queen-size sheets measure sixty by eighty inches, and America is the greatest country on earth. Having grown up with this in our ears, it's startling to realize that other countries have nationalistic slogans of their own, none of which are 'We're number two!
At the end of a miserable day, instead of grieving my virtual nothing, I can always look at my loaded wastepaper basket and tell myself that if I failed, at least I took a few trees down with me.