But life is not like that. You are not an airline. You can't remove a single olive from every salad served in first class and save one point two million dollars.

Childhood friends are continuity, uninterrupted connections between selves, and you hold on them. You hold on them and you love them, but sometimes they're not quite comfortable.

Talking to them was like being placed into conversational purgatory, with no hope of being released without significant damage to one's self-esteem.

You noticed that I wore this outfit twice? Why, the only thing you wear twice is a sour expression.

A technicality I'm prepared to hide wildly behind.

Back then if you gave a mouse a cookie, he would ask you for a glass of milk. Nowadays if you give a mouse a cookie, he's gonna ask you for a 20 lb lobster dinner.