Sometimes I think that Jesus watches my neurotic struggles, and shakes his head and grips his forehead and starts tossing back mojitos.

He got me a cup of tea with honey, toast with honey, yogurt with honey, like I was John the Baptist with the flu.

We can't understand when we're pregnant, or when our siblings are expecting, how profound it is to have a shared history with a younger generation: blood, genes, humor. It means we were actually here, on Earth, for a time - like the Egyptians with their pyramids, only with children.

Perfection is shallow, unreal, and fatally uninteresting.

Grace arrived, like the big, loopy stitches with which a grandmotherly stranger might baste your hem temporarily.

I see that children fill the existential hollowness many people feel; that when we have children, we know they will need us, and maybe love us, but we don't have a clue how hard it is going to be.

It's good to do uncomfortable things. It's weight training for life.