Behavior shapes emotions.

Think of negative speech as verbal pollution. And that's what I've been doing: visualizing insults and gossip as a dark cloud, maybe one with some sulfur dioxide. Once you've belched it out, you can't take it back. As grandma said, if you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all. The interesting this is, the less often I vocalize my negative thoughts, the fewer negative thoughts I cook up in the first place.

It comes back to the old question: How can the Bible be so wise in some places and so barbaric in others? And why should we put any faith in a book that includes such brutality?

Probably 90 percent of our life decisions are powered by the twin engines of inertia and laziness.

Plus, in one of his e-mails, the guy said he didn't like pancakes. What kind of asshole doesn't like pancakes?

The best we can do, to paraphrase Pollan, is to eat whole foods, mostly plants, and not too much.

Giulia Melucci has written a wonderfully funny and moving book. It's like Eat, Pray, Love, with recipes.