A good [short story] would take me out of myself and then stuff me back in, outsized, now, and uneasy with the fit. - David Sedaris

My dad was like the Marine Corps, only instead of tearing you to pieces and then putting you back together, he just did the first part and called it a day. I'm sure my father said plenty of normal things to me when I was growing up, but what stuck, probably because he said it, like, ten thousand times, was "Everything you touch turns to crap." His other catchphrase was "You know what you are? A big fat zero."

You know you're young when someone asks you for money and you take it as a compliment.

I wanted to be perfect,” he said over dinner. “I…need to be perfect.” It’s such a burden to place on yourself. Say you are perfect — who’s going to recognize it? Few things are like the Olympics, where judges hold up score cards. How does one paint perfectly? Or lawyer perfectly? The key is to fill the space between your skill level and perfection with charm. That said, you can’t do it consciously. Charm can’t be constructed that way.