As we grow up, it feels like you should either invite people into your life or not. There should be fewer and fewer instances of friends you 'can only take in small doses.'

Everything in New York seems to merit preserving. If it’s not historical, it’s personal. If it’s not personal, it’s cultural. But you can’t. You can’t save everything. You just have to pack it up in your brain and take it with you when you go.

I think it’s hard to have a full-time job and write fiction, but for essays, you need to be in the world.

In New York, if you weigh under 200 pounds and decline so much as a cookie at a co-worker’s party, women will flock to your side, assuring you of your appealing physique. This is how skittish we are about the dangers of anorexia and the pressures of body image.

I think humor is the social use. You can put anything in it. I think – yes, I speak heavily in analogies – it is like putting the medicine in apple sauce or a block of cheese for a dog. Not that anyone in this room is a dog in this scenario.

The search for one’s first professional job is not unlike a magical love potion: when one wants to fall in love with the next thing one sees, one generally does.

I don’t understand how you can be a decent writer and not know people.

Besides, a new decade is a chance to find oneself at the beginning of things. Oh, life! What a sweet little Etch A Sketch of time you are!

Juice cleansing has been all the rage for some time. And I used the word ‘rage’ advisedly; one must push a violent flood of liquidised vegetables and fruit through one’s system for at least three days in order to perform a ‘cleanse.’

I felt like I wasn’t doing justice to either side of my life. It wasn’t pronounced. Publicity is an awkward thing to do. It is awkward to call people up all the time and ask them for things on a very basic level.