I am imperfect in a million ways, but I always thought I was the kind of woman, the kind of wife to whom a husband would be faithful.

If you know someone who has lost a child, and you're afraid to mention them because you think you might make them sad by reminding them that they died-you're not reminding them. They didn't forget they died. What you're reminding them of is that you remembered that they lived, and that is a great gift.

Life is this great big blackboard, and on it you write all the things that you do.

You have to have enough respect for other human beings to leave their lives alone. If you admire that life, build it for yourself. Don't just try to come in and take somebody else's life.

What happened after Katrina is that people were stirred to action; there were an enormous number of contributions by people trying to make a difference. But then we forget. We've forgotten Katrina victims, we've forgotten the face of poverty.

She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.

There is nothing about resilience that I can say that my father did not first utter silently in eighteen years of living inside a two-dimensional cutout of himself.