Alice wonders if other women in the middle of the night have begun to resent their Formica.

To think is not always to see.

Stop a minute, right where you are. Relax your shoulders, shake your head and spine like a dog shaking off cold water. Tell that imperious voice in your head to be still.

It's what you do that makes your soul.

A person could spend most of a lifetime in retrospective terror, thinking of all the things one nearly didn't do.

Patriotism threatens free speech with death. It is infuriated by thoughtful hesitation, constructive criticism of our leaders and pleas for peace. It despises people of foreign birth. It has specifically blamed homosexuals, feminists and the American Civil Liberties Union. In other words, the American flag stands for intimidation, censorship, violence, bigotry, sexism, homophobia and shoving the Constitution through a paper shredder. Whom are we calling terrorists here?

Food is the rare moral arena in which the ethical choice is generally the one more likely to make you groan with pleasure.