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" I would gladly have accepted a heaping spoonful of nepotism when I got out of college and was looking for a job. "

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" It's funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They're usually quite nice comparisons; I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate. "

" There is no such thing as a crazy dog person in New York. Are there people who are completely insane about their dogs? Hordes. But cat people may as well have whiskers and tails themselves. That's because their pets' lack of social need taps straight into our worst fears as the human inhabitants of New York. "

" My personality, when tasked with creating meals, goes something like this: Is there a way we can make this more difficult? Because let's do that. I don't mean to complicate things. It's just - why buy pre-packaged potato salad when you can spend your morning boiling potatoes and flipping out because there's no dill in the house? "

" Some of the writers I admire who seem very, very funny and very emotional to me can develop a closeness with the reader without giving too much of themselves away. Lorrie Moore comes to mind, as does David Sedaris. When they write, the reader thinks that they're being trusted as a friend. "

" Personal technology has given us the freedom of being able to do whatever we want - and in the case of celebrities and athletes, whomever they want. But it can also serve as a humiliation jetpack. "

" I used to think that nails-down-a-chalkboard was the worst sound in the world. Then I moved on to people-eating-cereal-on-the-phone. But only this week did I stumble across the rightful winner: it's the sound of a baggage carousel coming to a grinding halt, having reunited every passenger on your flight with their luggage, except for you. "

" A pet store is a celebration of dogs' existence and an explosion of options. About cats, a pet store seems to say, 'Here, we couldn't think of anything else.' Cats are the Hanukkah of the animal world in this way. They are feted quietly and happily by a minority, but there's only so much hoopla applicable to them. "

" I have certain rules that I've established for myself that took a while post-day job to figure out. Everyone says people who freelance or are writers struggle with the structure of it. I'm not allowed to check email before a certain hour. I'm not allowed to run errands during the day. I have to write a certain amount every day. "

" Everyone has been in a social situation where you say something and it goes unnoticed, then someone else says the same thing and everyone laughs a lot. You learn how to be more creative and whacky and amusing. "

" Cohabitation seems a greater leap in cities because it's all the harder to extract oneself if things turn sour. It's what keeps otherwise functional adults living with their mothers. "

" Our culture's obsession with vintage objects has rendered us unable to separate history from nostalgia. People want heart. They want a chaser of emotion with their aesthetics. "

" Yes. I am writing full-time. Which is strange. It feels like not having a job. "

" I don't do emoticons unless I'm making a big deal out of them. I'll type out, 'This is so amusing it makes me want to grin in pixels.' And then do it. "

" I don't really think of my essays as being about myself. I know it sounds insane, but I just don't think of them as a memoir. They're essays; they're not an autobiography. "

" I do think New York prepares you for the crossection of personalities and realities on display when you leave the country, and I'd live somewhere else if I had a reason or burning-the-the-point-of-discomfort desire to do so. "

" There's already a marriage clock, a career clock, a biological clock. Sometimes being a woman feels like standing in the lobby of a hotel, looking at the dials depicting every time zone in the world behind the front desk - except they all apply to you, and all at once. "

" I have a disproportionate amount of faith in the goodness of the world and that everything will actually work out okay. "

" Unless we're talking about old-school, witchcraft-trial violence, can we please phase out the phrase 'girl crush?' While we're at it, if we can axe 'like, total girl crush' unless Total Girl Crush is the name of a fizzy soft drink, in which case I'll take two, thank you. "

" 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.' "

" Let me put it this way: I don't feel as settled as I look. I think that's true of everyone, probably. Except for Beyonce and Jay-Z. I don't think they wake up and think, 'Ugh, when's it going to work out for us? Why can't we catch a break?' Aside from them, I'm pretty sure everyone's life feels a lot less intentional. "

" I think the rule of thumb should be this: if you preface a sentence about a friend with the phrase, 'I love X, but... ' more than once in any conversation, you should stop hanging out with them. "

" Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics. "

" You know what they say: 'Why sit at a table that doesn't have key lime pie on it if you don't have to?' "

" Suburbia is too close to the country to have anything real to do and too close to the city to admit you have nothing real to do. "

" Are there moments when I see unrequited crushes or ex-boyfriends slow dancing with their dates and kind of want to stab myself in the spleen with a salad fork? Yeah, sure. "

" The world I describe is about how people live now. It's not about zany people with unlimited, inexplicable funds in an apartment somewhere. "

" At the end of each year, I sit on the floor and go page by page through the old calendar, inking annual events into the new one, all the while watching my year in 'dinner withs' skate by. When I'm done, I save the old calendar in the box of the new one and put it with the others on a shelf. "

" For a long time I wanted to draw, but I could never get the proportions right. My still life sketches were the artistic equivalent of someone who has misjudged the space constraints of a postcard, the handwriting shrinking uncomfortably at the bottom. "

" The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play. "

" When I was nine years old, I wrote a short story called 'How to Build a Snowman,' from which no practical snowperson-crafting techniques could be gleaned. The story was an assignment for class and it featured a series of careful but meaningless instructions. Of course, the building of the snowman was a red herring. "