I am the indoctrinated child of two lapsed Irish Catholics. Which is to say: I am not religious.

I think about my mother every day. But usually the thoughts are fleeting - she crosses my mind like a spring cardinal that flies past the edge of your eye: startling, luminous, lovely... gone.

One word I had throughout the first year and a half of my mother's death was 'unmoored.' I felt that I had no anchor, that I had no home in the world.

All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.

There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

Grief is characterized much more by waves of feeling that lessen and reoccur, it's less like stages and more like different states of feeling.

It's a blessing not to be alone in your grief but it's also painful to see your parents and siblings in pain.

One of the things about grief is that it can bring a deeper perspective into your life; in the end, it has, for me, though it's also brought sorrow.

When my mother was sick, I found myself needing to put down in my journals all sorts of things - to try to understand them, and, I think, to try to remember them.

Even a life raft is only supposed to get you from the sinking ship back to land, you were never intended to live in the life raft, to drift years on end, in sight of land but never close enough.

This is from the queen? And you say it’s for a mouse? I’m sorry, sir, but the Pyramid Hotel doesn’t allow any pets except for service animals.

Free your mind and free yourself from brand slavery.

Evil doesn't just go away.

If you're straight with your players, they'll be straight with you.

A shortcut is the longest distance between two points.

Research now seems to indicate that one hour of inner action is worth seven hours of out-in-the-worl d action. Think about that. You're working too hard.

With short hair you have to get a haircut every two or three weeks. And if you're coloring your hair, you have to color it that often. Every time I did it, I felt fraudulent.

I'm kind of a 'Fix-It Felix' video girl. I like the simpler, sweeter kind of games.

At birth, we emerge from dream soup. At death, we sink back into dream soup. In between soups, there is a crossing of dry land. Life is a portage.