I'm a sucker when it comes to under-explored human potential and 'stuff that makes you be better.'

Never hold up your entire group of friends in real life trying to capture a perfect Instagram pose. Nobody cares.

Teens are strange and magical.

Bieber has taste and pull, which is as important to making quality pop as actual talent.

Nothing beats SoulCycle for dumbing all the way out or re-calibrating a mood in less than an hour, which is reassuring, since I typically wake up in a panic that's candy-coated with a low-grade rage.

A fanboy's heart is filled with love, enthusiasm, and insecurity.

I just love the comics industry.

I do not care for musicals. In fact, I hate them.

If you can relate to what another person is going through while giving their experience room to be its own discrete thing, you're probably a crackerjack emergency contact.

By the time you're in your 30s, unless somebody makes the god-awful decision to gift you with a cooking class or salsa lessons, it may have been a while since you learnt something new.

There is so much focus on being self-sufficient, and it makes it very difficult to ask for things. I've been crippled by this notion of high-functioning self-sufficiency. And I see it a lot in younger girls. Asking for help brings people closer in a way that I suspected but didn't actually put into practice.

Reading aloud to other people is wonderful - if you have people who will suffer it.

I would never give up 'The Wire,' 'Breaking Bad,' and 'Game of Thrones.' I'm grateful for all these expensive, excellent, graphically ambitious programs.

You are overwhelmed, overscheduled, and dejected because you keep trying to have it all - or at least most of it. You want a fulfilling job and personal life, and it's not working. The way out? Work more.

My sweet spot as a writer and, especially, as an essayist is sub-1500 words.

Even the coolest jobs get stultifying with repetition, and the only way to break that cycle is to bring another job into the mix.

'Avatar' is staggering. It's seismic. Evolutionarily speaking, it is cladogenesis in a thunderclap.

The first time I drank LaCroix, I half expected it to be filled with self-tanner. Or Axe body spray.

'Awkward' is a ubiquitous teen word to denote socially unsanctioned behavior. It usually implies first- or secondhand embarrassment when you or a friend step outside the rules. Awkward doesn't sound overtly judgmental or negative; it's deliberately vague.

Instagram is not a place for tone or irony.

SoulCycle feels gross, is gross, and I'm grateful to have found it.

Everyone is such a mystery, yet we chug along so much of the time presuming we're all on the same page.

I always get super confused by the way we look at technology, because since when were all phone calls created equal? It's not like every text is the same or that all texts are human interactions that are compromised. I don't get how conduits somehow dictate sentiment.

I roll my eyes at the grandstanding blowhards who have 'fixed' themselves, but I keep up with the gizmos and apps that track people's various rhythms. I'm no lifelogger or body-hacker, but I'm curious, and I want to be in-tune enough to know what's really the matter so I can level up and be at my most awesome.

I'm great at leaving. I am less talented at getting left, though I should be better, given how much it's happened.

I love how British people call Asian people 'oriental' unless they're talking about Indian people, who get to be called Asian.

Home is where my house pants live. And they're hideous.

Never post boring back-to-back selfies.

I have horrible shoe hang-ups. Particularly when it comes to flats.

You always feel like a hack and a fraud when you're writing. It's just how it goes.

Try life as your own boss, on your own voyage. No daily commute. No salad bar at 12:15. No cc'ing about the meeting.

There's a really generous readership with YA.

For people who deal with anxiety or depression or can't be in large social groups cognitively, emotionally, or even physically, phones help bridge the gap.

Yes, Justin Bieber is a contrivance. Yes, Justin Bieber's lyrics are insipid - worse still, disingenuous. Yes, his tattoos stink. Yes, he's lousy at skateboarding. But what does any of this actually matter? In case you missed it, Bieber won.

Have passion, yes, but acknowledge that side projects are still work. They shake things up, just like switching up your workout helps you stay one step ahead of your torpid metabolism. They scramble the synapses.

Privateers, military contractors - these aren't pirates. They have bosses. Real pirates are sellswords on missions of their own making.

Never post food on your Instagram. Nobody cares, and only old people do it.

I like science a whole bunch, but I love 'The X-Files' more - I want to believe.

I love my mother a not-normal amount.

When I was small, I thought I was just cooler than my mom because of how foreign she is. She's really foreign. You'd think it would kill her to get store-bought snacks, she's that foreign.

When I was five, I compound-fractured my arm, pulverising my elbow.

Consider this: alms aside, Wikipedia is fueled by competitive pedantry and emo-ness. How great is that?

I cannot quantify the physics of friendships and do not know exactly how much intense pressure can be applied before these glittery, brittle bonds break.

In New York, you collect a thousand encounters a year, a passel of handshakes, a zillion air-kisses, and boatloads of business cards that you pitch into your purse and eventually deposit your chewing gum into. Amid this break-neck montage of glancing contacts, I'm tormented by the constant thrumming fear of being fingered as a flake.

Home is where I climb out of my mecha-suit-of-a-poised-persona and power down.

I love small-business owners, and I actually love the idea of vintage clothing, but I don't get when they pretend that the Internet doesn't exist or that other customers have never been to the whole rest of the country where you can rummage around and buy the same dang belt for a buck and a half.

If there was a button that I could push that would agog my brain to the level that I felt first seeing 'Avatar' in its entirety and another one for food pellets, I would die of starvation.

Rihanna's boots are too scared to look bad on Rihanna.

From the first time I harangued my mother into buying me a pair of platform sandals at the irascible and persistent age of 11, I've worn heels.

Join a Bikram-flow-yoga, Flywheel, or Pilates class so you can find spiritual oneness amid grunting socialite moms. Do whatever you want. Just, please, for the love of God, stop talking about it.