Housework is a treadmill from futility to oblivion with stop-offs at tedium and counter productivity.

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see ... we listen, but never hear ... we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.

It is my theory you can't get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.

Marriage has no guarantees. If that's what you're looking for, go live with a car battery.

Thanks to my mother, not a single cardboard box has found its way back into society. We receive gifts in boxes from stores that went out of business twenty years ago.

Guilt: the gift that keeps on giving.

I see children as kites. You spend a lifetime trying to get them off the ground. You run with them until you're both breathless. They crash . . . you add a longer tail . . . you patch and comfort, adjust and teach. You watch them lifted by the wind and assure them that someday they'll fly.