what we call things matters. ... The words we use, and how we perceive those words, reflect how we value, or devalue, people, places, and things.

high fashion has little to do with what women wear and a lot to do with what retailers mark down later.

Hospitals are a little like the beach. The next wave comes in, and the footprints of your pain and suffering, your delivery and recovery, are obliterated.

My father expected his first child to be a boy, and when it didn't turn out that way he didn't let the fact get in the way of a good story.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

knowledge of our own mortality is the greatest gift God ever gives us.

I think the gift of my mother's death, if anything so terrible can be said to have an upside to it, is that I was always keenly aware that life was fleeting, and that you'd better live while you have the chance. As I say in the book, since I was 19 years old I felt like I was living for two, and when I out-lived my mother, when I got into my forties, it felt like a miracle to me.