A first child is your own best foot forward, and how you do cheer those little feet as they strike out. You examine every turn of flesh for precocity, and crow it to the world. But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after--oh, that' s love by a different name.

Cooking is 80 percent confidence, a skill best acquired starting from when the apron strings wrap around you twice.

Scientific illiteracy in our populations is leaving too many of us unprepared to discuss or understand much of the damage we are wreaking on our atmosphere, our habitat, and even the food that enters our mouths.

Vengeance does not subtract any numbers from the equation of murder; it only adds them.

Awareness is everything. Hallie once pointed out to me that people worry a lot more about the eternity *after* their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand.

A breeze shook rain out of new leaves onto their hair, but in their pursuit of eternity they never noticed the chill.

He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.