The Friend

by Sigrid Nunez

There were two errors in your obituary. The date you moved from London to New York: off by one year. Misspelling of the maiden name of Wife One. Small errors, which were later corrected, but which we all knew would have annoyed the hell out of you.

They say the way to get rid of an earworm is to listen a couple of times to the whole song through.

Give me a pet that can get along without me.

When I get so fed up with something I’m writing that I decide to quit, and then, later, I find myself irresistibly drawn back to it, I always think: Like a dog to its vomit.

It’s because a person has a sense of humor that we feel we can trust them,

But animals live and die in that state, and seeing innocence violated in the form of cruelty to a mere duck can seem like the most barbaric act in the world.

Maybe he understands that, when I’m not feeling so great, losing myself in a book is the best thing I could do.

When you have to make a decision in life, about what you should do, do what will cost you the most.

James Patterson, one of the world’s richest authors, net worth $700 million (probably more now). Focus on the story not the sentence.

Better a dog for a husband than a husband who’s a dog,

Because the truth is, in this case it’s the animal who can’t deal, and you’re his emotional support human.

When I hear someone describe a wine as having a heavy black-pepper aroma followed by hints of raspberry and blackberry, I know they’re full of shit.

What we miss—what we lose and what we mourn—isn’t it this that makes us who, deep down, we truly are. To say nothing of what we wanted in life but never got to have.