Caroline Knapp

“By definition, memoir demands a certain degree of introspection and self-disclosure: In order to fully engage a reader, the narrator has to make herself known, has to allow her own self-awar...”

“Solitude is a breeding ground for idiosyncrasy, and I relish that about it, the way it liberates whim.”

“Happy and alone, you say? Reclusive and merry? How oxymoronic! Pas possible! Alas, the concept is lost on so many.”

“Around the time I began starving, in the early eighties, the visual image had begun to supplant text as culture's primary mode of communication, a radical change because images work so diffe...”

“Me, I walk along and feel quietly defensive, a recluse in the Land of We. That's quite the loaded word, 'we.'”

“Cottage cheese is one of our culture's most visible symbols of self-denial; marketed honestly, it would appear in dairy cases with warning labels: this substance is self-punitive; ingest wit...”

“Dogs have such short life spans, it's like a concentrated version of a human life. When they get older, they become much more like our mothers. They wait for us, watch out for us, are comple...”