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I Never Asked My Mother Where Babies Came From But I Remember Clearly The Day She Volunteered The Information....my Mother Called Me To Set The Table For Dinner. She Sat Me Down In The Kitchen, And Under The Classic Caveat Of 'loving Each Other Very, Very Much,' Explained That When A Man And A Woman Hug Tightly, The Man Plants A Seed In The Woman. The Seed Grows Into A Baby. Then She Sent Me To The Pantry To Get Placemats. As A Direct Result Of This Conversation, I Wouldn't Hug My Father For Two Months.

-Sloane Crosley

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I Never Asked My

Sloane Crosley

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I Never Asked My Mother Where Babies Came From But I Remember Clearly The Day She Volunteered The Information....my Mother Called Me To Set The Table For Dinner. She Sat Me Down In The Kitchen, And Under The Classic Caveat Of 'loving Each Other Very, Very Much,' Explained That When A Man And A Woman Hug Tightly, The Man Plants A Seed In The Woman. The Seed Grows Into A Baby. Then She Sent Me To The Pantry To Get Placemats. As A Direct Result Of This Conversation, I Wouldn't Hug My Father For Two Months.

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The Darkness At Irving. Hope To Have As Much Fun Doing Anything Ever As These Guys Have On Stage.

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Are There Moments When I See Unrequited Crushes Or Ex-boyfriends Slow Dancing With Their Dates And Kind Of Want To Stab Myself In The Spleen With A Salad Fork? Yeah, Sure.

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Because, Ten-year-olds Of The World, You Shouldn't Believe What Your Teachers Tell You About The Beauty And Specialness And Uniqueness Of You. Or, Believe It, Little Snowflake, But Know It Won't Make A Bit Of Difference Until After Puberty. It's Newton's Lost Law: Anything That Makes You Unique Later Will Get Your Chocolate Milk Stolen And Your Eye Blackened As A Kid. Won't It, Sebastian? Oh, Yes, It Will, My Little Mandarin Chinese-learning, Poe-reciting, High-top-wearing Friend. God Bless You, Wherever You Are.

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In New York And La, There Is Sort Of That Silent Competition To Be On The Cutting Edge Of Something.

In Every Woman's Wardrobe, There Are Certain Accessories That Cannot Be Separated From Their Back Stories.

I Would Gladly Have Accepted A Heaping Spoonful Of Nepotism When I Got Out Of College And Was Looking For A Job.

You Just Don't Notice The Time Of Your Own Metamorphosis. Until You Do. Every Once In A While Time Dissolves And You Remember What You Liked As A Kid. You Jump On Your Hotel Bed, Order Dessert First, Decide To Put Every Piece Of Jewelry You Own On Your Body And Leave The House. Why? Because You Can. Because You're The Boss. Because... Ooooh. Shiny.

A Lot Of People Are Lonely. A Lot Of People Are Lonely Even When They're Surrounded By Other People.

You Feel Like Telling Him You're Not Single In The Way That He Thinks You're Single. After All, You Have Yourself. I Think A Lot Of Humor Is About Distracting Yourself. Pretend You're Not Trying To Make It Funny. Because For Some Reason The Effort To Be Funny Smells Like Sulphur In Our Culture.

No Affair That Begins With Such An Orchestrated Overture Can End On A Simple Note.

The Hardest Thing Is Spending Twelve Hours A Day Accommodating The Rest Of The World, Then Going Home At Night And Criticizing It. I Would Be Curious About What I'd Write If I Didn't Have To Worry About Offending.

We Are Only As Good As Our Most Extreme Experiences

For A Long Time I Wanted To Draw, But I Could Never Get The Proportions Right. My Still Life Sketches Were The Artistic Equivalent Of Someone Who Has Misjudged The Space Constraints Of A Postcard, The Handwriting Shrinking Uncomfortably At The Bottom.

I Now Know My Right From My Left And My Up From My Down. Unluckily, My Terrible Sense Of Direction Remains. For Me, To Live In New York City Is To Never Be Able To Meet Someone On The Northeast Corner. It Is To Never Ever Make A Smooth Entrance, Always To Get Caught Looking Lost On The Street.

For Me, Titles Are Either A Natural Two-second Experience Or Stressful Enough To Give You An Ulcer. If They Don't Pop Out Perfect On The First Try, They Can Be Really Hard To Repair. Or, Worse, If The Author Thinks They Pop Out Perfect, But The Publishing House Does Not Agree, It's Difficult To Shift Gears. And Then? Then You Go Insane.

Publishing House

Time Grabs You By The Scruff Of Your Neck And Drags You Forward. You Get Over It, Of Course. Everyone Was Right About That. One Mathematically Insignificant Day, You Stop Hoping For Happiness And Become Actually Happy.

Suburbia Is Too Close To The Country To Have Anything Real To Do And Too Close To The City To Admit You Have Nothing Real To Do.

I Write On Weekends, On Vacation, And, Really - On Deadline And On My Floor. Both Terrible For The Back.

I Have Come To Understand Myself As More Of A New York Writer, Or More Of A Woman Writer, But I Don't Feel Like That While I'm Writing. But I Think That Most New Yorkers Would Object To Calling Me A New Yorker. I Didn't Grow Up Here.

It's Never Good To Fall In Love With Someone Whom You'd Have To Stab In The Eyeballs To Elicit A Response.

Falling In Love

Most People Don't Get Lucky. They Get Human. They Get Crushes. This Means You Irrationally Mortgage What Little Logic You Own To Pay For This One Thing. This Relationship Is An Impulse Buy, And You'll Figure Out If It's Worth It Later.

I Wouldn't Want To Live In Berlin. It's Bombed Out And There's A Lot Of Techno.

Because This Is The Beauty Of Strangers: We're All Just Doing Our Best To Help Each Other Out, Motivated Not By Karma But By A Natural Instinct To Help The Greater Whole.

Natural Instinct

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Hjalmar Branting

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