"we don't have chemistry. or banter. or common interests. you're a yoga instructor; you get colonics; you don't - you don't appreciate the chaos and absurdity of life on this planet, and in this city... you don't understand irony, or ethnicity, or eccentricty, or poetry, or the simple joy of being a regular at the diner on your block - i love that!

you don't drink coffee. or alcohol. you don't over-eat. you don't cry when you're alone. you don't understand sarcasm. you plod through life in a neat, colorless, caffeine-free, dairy-free, conflict-free, banal self-possessed way. i'm bold and angry and tortured and tremendous, and i notice when someone has changed their hair part, or when someone is wearing two very distinctively different shades of black, or when some changes the natural timbre of their voice on the phone.

i don't give out empty praise... i'm not complacent - or well-adjusted; i can't spend fifteen minutes breathing and stretching, and getting in touch with myself; i can't spend three minutes finishing an article! i check my phone machine nine times every day, and i can't sleep at night, because i feel that there is so much to do and fix and change in the world. and i wonder every day if i'm making a difference and if i will ever express the greatness within me, or if i will remain forever paralyzed by the muddled madness inside my head. i've wept on every birthday i've ever had, because life is huge and fleeting, and i hate certain people and certain shoes. and i feel that life is terribly unfair, and sometimes beautiful, and wonderful, and extraordinary, but also numbing and horrifying and insurmountable. and i hate myself a lot of the time, but a lot of the rest of the time, i adore myself, and i adore my life in this city, and this world that we live in -- this huge and wondrous, bewildering, brilliant, horrible world."

-- jennifer westfeldt, kissing jessica stein.