GREAT SECRET Whenever I’m learning something difficult, I keep expectations low, and aspirations high.

Like his admirer Samuel Beckett, Johnson locates his voices among conditions of such deprivation that even the most miserable memories are gilded by comparison: this paradox fuels equal parts of comedy and pathos. Never sentimental, at once corrosive and elegiac, House Mother Normal is a remarkable achievement.

I'm good with machines. I know where to scratch, pet, and tickle them.

Spaying is a compromise in terms of reverence for life, but perhaps a necessary one in a society which kills millions of dogs and cats a year in animal shelters.