To extract the fullest flavor of our drinking house, we needed to spend serious evening time there, slowly coming to know the bartender and the regulars, their joys and sorrows.

Gloom we have always with us, a rank and sturdy weed, but joy requires tending.

We don't get enough pampering. If we were once the only child of an adoring mother, we developed a taste for it; if not, we developed a thirst for it.

a woman may be called a wife and mother for most of her life, while a man is called a husband and father only at his funeral.

Dogwoods are great optimists. Daffodils wait and see, crouching firmly underground just in case spring doesn't come this year, but dogwoods have faith.

Cats vary so widely that all data is meaningless and the professional classifiers gnash their teeth trying to come up with even a single fact common to all.

True ownership of anything requires time.

New York was where we wanted to live when we were finally grown up, and drink martinis and stay out past bedtime.

There is no 'cat language.' Painful as it is for us to admit, they don't need one!

By and large, people who enjoy teaching animals to roll over will find themselves happier with a dog.

The only people who still read poetry are poets, and they mostly read their own.

I've raced on all seven continents at least twice. I've probably run thousands of races. But the single race that I'm most proud is a 10K. Yes, a 10K. I ran it with my daughter on her 10th birthday.

Justice is what you get when you run out of money.

I'm all about flannels and layers, so that's pretty much what I rock.

The China game was the best because it took the effort of everyone on the team to survive 120 minutes.

I’m a total atheist, and for me it’s just about trying to find something that rises above the banal day-to-day bullshit of living.

One should not exaggerate the importance of trifles. Life, for instance, is much too short to be taken seriously.

The butterfly went to heaven and became a butterfly necktie.

A thing which is present can be invisible, hidden by what it shows

I'm trying to put more elements of the essay into my writing.