Birthdays are a reward for having shown up 365 days in a row. It's like getting a badge for attendance.

How about "diamonds are a girl's best friends"? Nope. It should be switched around and pointed out, instead, that your best friends are diamonds.

Anger can offer a sense of indignity to replace a sense of shame, and offer a voice-raised above others-which can finally be heard. Those voices are most effective when they are raised in unison, when they have mercy as well as anger behind them, and when, instead of roaring at the anger of old pain, they sing about the glorious possibilities of a future where anger has a smaller house than hope.

We should remind ourselves that laughing together is as close as you can get to another person without touching, and sometimes it represents a closer tie than touching ever could.

Although fear in the right dosage and under the right circumstance protects us ... imaginary fear offers straitjackets instead of lifejackets, nooses instead of safety nets.

Most cooks would not, for example, prepare an important, elaborate, and difficult dish on the back-burner. Neither should we relegate the cultivation and preparation of happiness for a position where it is both hard to reach and difficult to infuse with new ingredients.

Anger is the quintessential individual-signature emotion: I am what makes me mad.