Your experiences will be yours alone. But truth and best friendship will rarely if ever disappoint you.

Life is like a recycling center, where all the concerns and dramas of humankind get recycled back and forth across the universe. But what you have to offer is your own sensibility, maybe your own sense of humor or insider pathos or meaning. All of us can sing the same song, and there will still be four billion different renditions.

There is ecstasy in paying attention.

Toddlers can make you feel as if you have violated some archaic law in their personal Koran and you should die, infidel.

Having a baby is like suddenly getting the world's worst roommate.

It's incredibly touching when someone who seems so hopeless finds a few inches of light to stand in and makes everything work as well as possible. All of us lurch and fall, sit in the dirt, are helped to our feet, keep moving, feel like idiots, lose our balance, gain it, help others get back on their feet, and keep going.

Raising a child, whether or not it is yours, is like Nautilus of the heart and soul.