My children, who are almost two: watching them develop has made me pay much closer attention to how we become who we are.

[s]he was a compulsive pessimist, always looking for the soft brown spot in the fruit, pressing so hard she created it.

In life, redemption was walking up the down escalator: stop to congratulate yourself, and back you slid.

Religious speech is extreme, emotional, and motivational. It is anti-literal, relying on metaphor, allusion, and other rhetorical devices, and it assumes knowledge within a community of believers.

Perhaps this was the secret to being at peace: want nothing but what is given to you.

Jealousy clings to love's underside like bats to a bridge.

Sorrow can be a bully.

The September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon prompted a fundamental shift in the American government's approach to Islamic terrorism.

There were in life rarely, if ever, "right" decisions, never perfect ones, only the best to be made under the circumstances.

Nothing in life gets dropped without someone else having to pick it up.

Fabricating reality was criminal; editing it, commonplace.

Sometimes, insatiable curiosity and compassion are all that life requires of us.

Berries have a lot of soluble fiber. That's why they gel up when you're making your Thanksgiving cranberry sauce, with the pectin.

It's just a matter of hitting the ball where I want to hit it and hopefully making some putts.

You have to encourage people not to give in to the temptation to be normal, even if it isn't easy - because when you're young, you really want to belong.

What I really want, and what I never get - is to be appreciated.

Simple, yet effective!

when you fall in love, you must fall in love with a man the way he is now, because marriage won't change anything, except maybe your tax deduction.

When you're really young, you're young for life.

I don't blame Bill Maher for mocking religion. I can see why he took the trouble to make the movie. In one sense, it's overdue.

I honor those who try to rid themselves of any lying, who empty the self and have only clear being there.