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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

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.