“Eating should be an act of physical necessity or emotional joy, not something to alleviate boredom.”

“Some points in time cannot flow. Think of those big-ticket moments, the ones you could still recite from fifth grade: your 1492 and Civil Wars, the Titanic and presidential assassinations. These ar...”

“We paw at nostalgia even before we hit twenty, wanting a holiday that never happened, a wholesomeness that could not survive in the wild.”

“We may deny the truth of our childhoods while we are living them, but we one day realize the truth of our parents as readily as we do that of Santa. Neither are as perfect as our memories would hav...”

“Maybe I have never had the Christmas I remember, since we never remember the event itself but just the last time we revisited the memory. I have woven together a few dozen scraps (the Sears catalog...”

“Change is loss. I was fully functional prior to the actions you have taken. If you change me, I will cease to be me. If you love me, you wouldnt want to change me Love appears to have made you less...”

“I was happy, but happy is an adult word. You don't have to ask a child about happy, you see it. They are or they are not. Adults talk about being happy because largely they are not. Talking about i...”

“Dear God," she prayed, "let me be something every minute of every hour of my life. Let me be gay; let me be sad. Let me be cold; let me be warm. Let me be hungry...have too much to eat. Let me be r...”

“I walked over to the hill where we used to go and sled. There were a lot of little kids there. I watched them flying. Doing jumps and having races. And I thought that all those little kids are goin...”

“You better watch out. You better not cry. You better not pout, I'm telling you why,Cause Santa Clause might put a cap in your ass.”