You do not need to be loved, not at the cost of yourself. Of all the people you will know in the lifetime, you are the only one you will never leave or lose.

The person who conveys, 'I am nothing. Make me something,' may all his life have people trying to answer his hidden plea, but their answer will be in terms of, 'I am trying to make you something because you are nothing,' and, thus, the insult will be embedded in the response. It will be heard just as clearly as the attempt to help. And it will be hated.

Most people ask of their friends that they understand them, but, on balance, I think I prefer a friend who understands himself.

Men fear being used; women fear being used up.

cookbooks, I found, are intended for people with time to cook - and, surprisingly often, for people who already know how to cook.

Almost anything can be stretched to serve more people by being added to a white sauce or canned gravy or undiluted or very slightly diluted canned soup and served over noodles or rice. With chops or chocolate eclairs, however, the only solution is to claim you don't like them.

If a man has a sense of identity that does not depend on being shored up by someone else, it cannot be eroded by someone else. If a woman has a sense of identity that does not depend on finding that identity in someone else, she cannot lose her identity in someone else. And so we return to the central fact: it is necessary to be.