the four virtues a person needs in order to be safe and happy in life: intelligence, friendship, strength and (I love this one) poetry.

You almost can't wait too long [to get married]. The longer you wait, the better off you are going to be. And the happier your kids are going to be, and the happier a mom you are going to be.

My husband is not American. He was born in Brazil, where he grew up under a filthy, corrupt dictatorship. In his twenties, he moved to Europe, where he lived for a while under various socialist democracies. He spent a few years on a kibbutz in Israel, living out a utopian experiment in communal existence.

When I tried this morning, after an hour or so of unhappy thinking, to dip back into my meditation, I took a new idea with me: compassion. I asked my heart if it could please infuse my soul with a more generous perspective on my mind's workings. Instead of thinking that I was a failure, could I perhaps accept that I am only a human being--and a normal one, at that?

There was really only one person who - and I remember to this day - he was a fireman, and he said, "You'll never know what you'll do when you're in a fire." Everyone else was like: "I don't care; I would have saved my children; I could have done it. Even if I was asleep I would have woken up and saved my children." But the fireman said, "You never know what's going to happen unless you're in there."

What are you willing to give up, in order to become who you really need to be?

Faith is belief in what you cannot see or prove or touch. Faith is walking face-first and full-speed into the dark.