... it's simply wrong to always order [kids] to stop that fighting. There are times when one child is simply defending his rights and damned well should be fighting.

My sister and I never engaged in sibling rivalry. Our parents weren't that crazy about either one of us.

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.

I've exercised with women so thin that buzzards followed them to their cars.

Laughter rises out of tragedy when you need it the most, and rewards you for your courage.

As a child, my number one best friend was the librarian in my grade school. I actually believed all those books belonged to her.

I was a closet pacifier advocate. So were most of my friends. Unknown to our mothers, we owned thirty or forty of those little suckers that were placed strategically around the house so a cry could be silenced in less than thirty seconds. Even though bottles were boiled, rooms disinfected, and germs fought one on one, no one seemed to care where the pacifier had been.