In increments both measurable and not, our childhood is stolen from us -- not always in one momentous event but often in a series of small robberies, which add up to the same loss.

Kids are perfect people till grownups get their hands on them.

If watching television doesn't hasten death, it surely manages to make death very inviting; for television so shamelessly sentimentalizes and romanticizes death that it makes the living feel they have missed something - just by staying alive.

No touching Baby Jesus.” “But we’re his parents!” proclaimed Mary Beth, who was being generous to include poor Joseph under this appellation. “Mary Beth,” Barb Wiggin said, “if you touch the Baby Jesus, I’m putting you in a cow costume.

My old coach used to say that if you were in it for the match, if you were in it for the trophies, you were in it for the wrong reasons.

It is much easier to be flexible about where a story begins than it ever was for me to change my mind about where and how a story ended.

If you presume to love something, you must love the process of it much more than you love the finished product.