PATRICIA MARX

For somebody who is a journalist, I can be awfully unobservant sometimes.

You don't have to spend much time in Shanghai before you start to get all existential about the meaning of authenticity. Did you know that Shanghai is building nine satellite towns, each designed to mimic the architecture and culture of a different country?

Everyone thinks that 'Chinatown' is the best screenplay. I'm not sure it is.

I write the shopping column. I think I've proven my superficiality.

Though the male can be noble in reason and infinite in faculties, he is also easily amused by shiny toys, especially ones that do dumb things on his desk.

New York may be the city that never sleeps, but Shanghai doesn't even sit down, and not just because there is no room.

Men still wear cologne, but I wish they wouldn't. No matter what you may believe, all men's fragrances smell like the air freshener in a taxi.

'Couch surfing' refers to the practice of temporarily lodging with a stranger - free of charge, unless you count being incessantly sociable as payment.

I don't really care that much about eating. But I like impressing people with how good a cook I am. So I will cook. I'm an excellent cook. Not many people know that about me.

It's better to spend a lot on a getup you love than a fraction of that on something, or even five of those somethings, that you'll never bother to take out of the shopping bag. By the way, this advice also applies to discount love interests. And half-price sushi.

High heels weren't always a girl thing. In the fifteen-hundreds, the riding shoes of French noblemen were fitted with raised heels so that their feet stayed put in the stirrups. Over the next few decades, heels inched higher on dress shoes, particularly among men of privilege.

Unless you're a salesman, or a bad guest on a talk show, you don't call someone by his name that often.

I think I began to like writing a lot more, and to be a better writer, when I did it for a while alone. It made me a little more confident about my style.

Males have probably always enjoyed watching the defeat of other males, but without the invention of numerals and the subsequent invention of the concept of keeping score, we could never have had a million sports channels.

I do not find the concept of consorting with unknown persons appealing.

New York is rich in culture, cuisine, and commerce.

One false word, one extra word, and somebody's thinking about how they have to buy paper towels at the store. Brevity is very important. If you're going to be longwinded, it should be for a purpose. Not just because you like your words.

Perhaps the most mysterious of all mammals is the male Homo sapiens. Indeed, many anthropologists classify the group as a subspecies.

The Chinese are no slouches when it comes to capitalism.

Being serious just makes me a little bit embarrassed.

I'm a goody-goody. I'm the person who sits in the back row, makes fun of the teacher, and secretly does the extra-credit work.

Part of my writing style can be attributed to my mother's impatience with comedy, because whenever I told her a story she would say, 'Yeah, yeah, just tell me: is it good for you or bad for you?' Consequently, I think, I was always afraid to indulge in the time that you need to tell a joke, very nervous about anything that constituted an Act II.

But that's typical of me. "This is going to end in tears," I tell myself every time I balance a cup of coffee on the upholstered arm of the chair I'm sitting on. And then, lo and behold, the cup topples and even before it lands, I tell myself, "Told me so!" Not to spell out, or spill out, one of the metaphors of my life, but I always do the stupid thing and then I do it again. I never learn.

It's always gratifying to share a hobby with a friend, and pining for erstwhile suitors falls into that category. In the months to come, Libby and I would analyze our respective exes with the gusto and intellectual rigor of Jesuits.

There better not be a God because I'll be in big trouble.