They were like people who run to meet, holding out their arms, but their aim is wrong; they pass each other and keep running.

Ever consider what pets must think of us? I mean, here we come back from a grocery store with the most amazing haul - chicken, pork, half a cow. They must think we're the greatest hunters on earth!

I read so I can live more than one life in more than one place.

But what I hope for from a book - either one that I write or one that I read - is transparency. I want the story to shine through. I don't want to think of the writer.

It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.

It is not how much you love someone, but who you are when you are with him.

The Amateur Marriage grew out of the reflection that of all the opportunities to show differences in character, surely an unhappy marriage must be the richest.

It is very difficult to live among people you love and hold back from offering them advice.

Once upon a time, there was a woman who discovered she had turned into the wrong person.

People always call it luck when you've acted more sensibly than they have.

The hardest novel to write was Dinner at the Homesick Restaurant.

Time expands, then contracts, all in tune with the stirrings of the heart.

You should never consider finished a war you did not win

You can't love a city if you have no memories burried there.

The universe conspires to steer one in the direction where one can flourish. Bad or good the experience will be a lesson and a lesson learned is fortune measured by wisdom gained.

Big, sweeping life changes really boil down to small, everyday decisions.

Feels right to have a woman follow President Obama, doesn't it?

From this moment on I know exactly where my life will go: seems that all I really was doing was waiting for love.

They are good furniture pictures, unworthy of praise, and undeserving of blame.

Confucius once said that a bear could not fart at the North Pole without causing a big wind in Chicago.

For a pediatrician to attack what has become the "bread and butter" of pediatric practice is equivalent to a priest denying the infallibility of the pope.