Two years ago, I was a twenty-nine year old secretary. Now I am a thirty-one year old writer. I get paid very well to sit around in my pajamas and type on my ridiculously fancy iMac, unless I'd rather take a nap. Feel free to hate me -- I certainly would.

Cooking saved my life! Sure, there were some miserable moments, but that was sort of the point, to find something challenging and consuming enough to take a place in the center of my life into which was creeping a horrible feeling of stasis and the doom of mediocrity.

Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and an Internet connection can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be.

Doors are going to open-doors you can't even imagine exist.

So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you.

There are times with your friends when you just have to put their whole mess out of your mind for a while.

But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart.

I love that after a day when nothing is sure, and when I say 'nothing' I mean nothing, you can come home and absolutely know that if you add egg yolks to chocolate and sugar and milk, it will get thick. It's such a comfort.

It's sad, but a relief as well, to know that two things so closely bound together can separate with so little violence.

I got my undergrad in Creative Writing, and then I didn't get my Masters in obsession, because I figured I already had that covered.

People want to care about people. People look after each other, given the chance. ... I believe just believing in goodness generates a tiny bit of the stuff, so that being so foolish as to believe in our better natures, if just for a day, we actually contribute to the sum total of generosity in the universe.

The nice thing about having a friend who is crazier than you are is that she bolsters your belief in your own sanity.