They Were Jesuits," She Told Me. "that

You Need To Give The Reader A Reason To Turn The Page. In A Diary, You Are Just Yourself. You Aren't Trying To Entertain. You Aren't Trying To Get Anyone To Turn The Page. I Have Over One Hundred And Fifty Six Volumes Of My Diary And I Guarantee You That If You Read Them, You'd Stop And Never Come Back.

A Zoo Is A Good Place To Make A Spectacle Of Yourself, As The People Around You Have Creepier, More Photogenic Things To Look At.

If Finding An Apartment Is Like Falling In Love, Buying One Is Like Proposing On Your First Date And Agreeing Not To See Each Other Until The Wedding.

A Good [short Story] Would Take Me Out Of Myself And Then Stuff Me Back In, Outsized, Now, And Uneasy With The Fit.

I'm So Old That When I Started Keeping A Diary They Were In Actual Books, And I Think That's One The Reasons That I've Never Written About Sex. Because Early On You Had To Worry That Someone Was Going To Find Your Diary, So It's Bad Enough To Be Writing Like Joan Didion, But Writing Like Joan Didion About Sex Acts You'd Performed With Somebody You Had Known For 20 Minutes, That's A Bit Worse. So I Would Write In My Diary, "i Met J. And We Had Sex Five Times Last Night." But I Would Never Write About What We Did.