In New York and L.A., there is sort of that silent competition to be on the cutting edge of something. You end up having a conversation with how the world receives your work, especially if you are writing narrative, not fiction. Sometimes it is an awkward conversation. It's like group therapy.

Sloane Crosley

Our brains are like bonsai trees, growing around our private versions of reality.

Sloane Crosley

brain tree reality

I never asked my mother where babies came from but I remember clearly the day she volunteered the information....my mother called me to set the table for dinner. She sat me down in the kitchen, and under the classic caveat of 'loving each other very, very much,' explained that when a man and a woman hug tightly, the man plants a seed in the woman. The seed grows into a baby. Then she sent me to the pantry to get placemats. As a direct result of this conversation, I wouldn't hug my father for two months.

Sloane Crosley

mother baby sex

If you have to ask someone to change, to tell you they love you, to bring wine to dinner, to call you when they land, you can't afford to be with them.

Sloane Crosley

being-single being-alone love-you

I think humor is the social use. You can put anything in it. I think - yes, I speak heavily in analogies - it is like putting the medicine in apple sauce or a block of cheese for a dog. Not that anyone in this room is a dog in this scenario.

Sloane Crosley

block dog thinking

There are two kinds of people in this world: those who know where their high school yearbook is and those who do not.

Sloane Crosley

yearbook two school

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.

Sloane Crosley

phones travel thinking

Life starts out with everyone clapping when you take a poo and goes downhill from there.

Sloane Crosley

clapping

Working on an essay versus a novel is like the difference between seeing to that curtain and seeing to New Jersey.

Sloane Crosley

jersey curtains differences

I thought I was going to write fiction but I fell backwards into non-fiction. It started when I got locked out of two apartments in one day and I told the story to some friends, one of whom worked in the 'Village Voice' and asked me to turn it into an essay.

Sloane Crosley

voice writing two

In every woman's wardrobe, there are certain accessories that cannot be separated from their back stories.

Sloane Crosley

accessories certain stories

I was diagnosed with a severe temporal spatial deficit, a learning disability that means I have zero spatial relations skills. It was official: I was a genius trapped in an idiot's body.

Sloane Crosley

zero skills mean

I felt like I wasn't doing justice to either side of my life. It wasn't pronounced. Publicity is an awkward thing to do. It is awkward to call people up all the time and ask them for things on a very basic level.

Sloane Crosley

awkward justice people

I do want to get married. It's a nice idea. Though I think husbands are like tattoos--you should wait until you come across something you want on your body for the rest of your life instead of just wandering into a tattoo parlor on some idle Sunday and saying, 'I feel like I should have one of these suckers by now. I'll take a thorny rose and a "MOM" anchor, please. No, not that one--the big one.

Sloane Crosley

tattoo husband mom

No affair that begins with such an orchestrated overture can end on a simple note.

Sloane Crosley

affair ends simple

Sometimes we don't know what we want until we don't get it.

Sloane Crosley

knows want sometimes

In New York and LA, there is sort of that silent competition to be on the cutting edge of something.

Sloane Crosley

competition cutting new-york

I like to try to do a little work before I do anything in the morning, even if it's a paragraph.

Sloane Crosley

littles morning trying

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.

Sloane Crosley

cat dog animal

I love to bake, so I made vanilla bean and blueberry muffins for sick hospital children. Just kidding! All of that is true except the sick children part.

Sloane Crosley

muffins sick children

Okay, this is Fran Lebowitz. She gave an interview once for the Paris Review about trying to write fiction and saying that fiction writers start talking about how characters are talking to them, and it's crazy, she's never had that. And I also thought, I'm never gonna be able to do this, because I didn't feel that for a really long time.

Sloane Crosley

crazy writing character