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.

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.

Truth is like nuclear waste: it needs to be dealt with carefully. Sometimes it needs to be buried way, way out of town. And sometimes it should never be uncovered at all.

I have an intimate relationship with books. After all, I take them with me into the bathtub-not an invitation I offer lightly.

Confessions are like tattoos in that 1) You convince yourself that the immediate pain of going through the process means it won't bother you later on; 2) They are permanent.

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.