You have the opposite of poker face. You have like.. miniature golf face.

This is a nice metaphor, too, about mothers and daughters - that when it came time for me to make my own, I was making a completely different garden than the one that my mom has. They don't look like they came from relatives. Hers is a very productive and pragmatic vegetable garden, and mine is a ridiculous overabundance of useless plants. It doesn't feed anybody, it doesn't serve any purpose.

Oh, I just want what we all want: a comfortable couch, a nice beverage, a weekend of no distractions and a book that will stop time, lift me out of my quotidian existence and alter my thinking forever.

I guess what I want to learn is how to live in this world and enjoy its delights but also devote myself to God.

The act of quiet nighttime talking, illustrates for me more than anything else the curious alchemy of companionship.

It's so much easier and cheaper to keep the river uncontaminated in the first place than it is to clean it up again once it's been polluted.

He endeared himself to me forever the first night we met, when I was getting frustrated with my inability to find the words I wanted in Italian, and he put his hand on my arm and said, "Liz, you must be very polite with yourself when you are learning something new.