The Misadventures of a Native New Yorker

If the history of the American sentence were a John Ford movie, its second act would conclude with the young Ernest Hemingway walking into a saloon, finding an etiolated Henry James slumped at the bar in a haze of indecision, and shooting him dead.

--Adam Haslett, Via the Bookslut Blog  

"I'm not an unhealthy person and I feel like one of the most tiring parts of being fat and being proud of it is…you do a lot of proving yourself all the time. It's really interesting to me that people will look at a thin person and go, 'That's a healthy person.' I want to go, 'Come open my refrigerator and look and then let's talk about what you think is so bad.'To be thin and to stay really thin, sometimes... some people literally do coke all the time. Some people smoke cigarettes instead of eating. That's crazy. But that's 'okay' because you look healthier." 

- Beth Ditto, of the band Gossip, to Jezebel.  

I couldn't agree with her more:

"I love 30 more than I've ever loved anything. I feel like I was born on my 30th birthday. It's finally the time where I've fully accepted and loved myself, which I'm realizing more and more each day — it is so important to love yourself. Because if you don't love yourself than nothing really matters. For a long time, I went through life kind of beating myself up and trying to be a perfectionist and do everything right and I just thought, 'What's the point?' I have faults, that's fine. I can still strive to be better, but I'm not going to be as rough on myself as I used to and it's just kind of alleviating all of this stress and kind of taken a weight off my shoulders and I think now I'm just happy."-Kristen Bell [ from Parade]

"My computer beat me at checkers, but I sure beat it at kickboxing."