The world I describe is about how people live now. It's not about zany people with unlimited, inexplicable funds in an apartment somewhere.

Some suggestions for you :

The trick to scrambled eggs is to remove half the milk from the container and shake what's left as hard as you can, like a cocktail shaker, before you whisk it into the eggs.

Insomniacs tend to fall into two general categories - those who give up and those who don't. I don't. I refuse to admit defeat by turning on the light. I will not try to read or watch a movie, thank you. Productivity is a crutch of the weak.

Unless you are a professional, you will find the tart to be a high-maintenance, unforgiving whistle-blower of a pastry.

I can't see the forest through the trees, except the trees are people.

There's just no concept of layering a thick-sleeved sweater under a coat in L.A. A coat is more of a gesture than a necessity. You know, in case the temperature goes down to 55 degrees.

I have definitely had experiences where I can feel the shift from simply living my life to being slightly outside of my life and taking notes.

We've come to expect so little from online privacy measures that public displays of concern about the matter are more or less for show. Being devastated to discover you've been tagged in somebody else's photo has an air of the melodramatic about it at this point.

When you spin a globe and point to a city and actually go to that city, you build an allowance of missed opportunities on the back end.

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.

My personality, when tasked with creating meals, goes something like this: Is there a way we can make this more difficult? Because let's do that. I don't mean to complicate things. It's just - why buy pre-packaged potato salad when you can spend your morning boiling potatoes and flipping out because there's no dill in the house?

Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics.

Ah, the power of two. There's nothing quite like it. Especially when it comes to paying utility bills, parenting, cooking elaborate meals, purchasing a grown-up bed, jumping rope and lifting heavy machinery. The world favours pairs. Who wants to waste the wood building an ark for singletons?

Cohabitation seems a greater leap in cities because it's all the harder to extract oneself if things turn sour. It's what keeps otherwise functional adults living with their mothers.

I am starting to like L.A., but the concept of a place you have to get used to so much seems a little weird to me. I have been to many foreign cities where I didn't have to acclimatize as much as I did to L.A.