Cats ... Are Like Four-legged Poster Children

The Real Struggle Is About You: You, A Person Who Has To Learn To Live In The Real World, To Inhabit Her Own Skin, To Know Her Own Heart, To Stop Waiting For Life To Begin.

Academic Achievement Was Something I'd Always Sought As A Form Of Reward. Good Grades Pleased My Parents, Good Grades Pleased My Teachers; You Got Them In Order To Sew Up Approval.

A Lot Of People, Quite Frankly, Think Intense Attachments To Animals Are Weird And Suspect, The Domain Of People Who Can't Quite Handle Attachments To Humans.

When You're Starving Or Wrapped Up In A Cycle Of Binge-ing-and-purging, Or Sexually Obsessed With (someone), It Is Very Hard To Think About Anything Else, Very Hard To See The Larger Picture Of Options That Is Your Life, Very Hard To Consider What Else You Might Need Or Want Or Fear Were You Not So Intently Focused On One Crushing Passion. I Sat In My Room Every Night, With Rare Exceptions, For Three And A Half Years.

On The Broad Spectrum Of Solitude, I Lean Toward The Extreme End: I Work Alone, As Well As Live Alone, So I Can Pass An Entire Day Without Uttering So Much As A Hello To Another Human Being. Sometimes A Day's Conversation Consists Of Only Five Words, Uttered At The Local Starbucks: 'large Coffee With Milk, Please.