Think of the beginning of the story of the beginning of everything: Adam (without Eve and without divine guidance) names the animals. Continuing his work, we call stupid people bird-brained, cowardly people chickens, fools turkeys. Are these the best names we have to offer? If we can revise the notion of women coming from a rib, can’t we revise our categorizations of the animals that, draped with barbecue sauce, end up as the ribs on our dinner plates — or for that matter, the KFC in our hands?

I could not believe in a God that would challenge faith like this.

There is a glaring reason that the necessary total ban on nontherapeutic use of antibiotics hasn't happened: The factory farm industry, allied with the pharmaceutical industry, has more power than public-health professionals.

My impression is that staying together as a couple does not correspond to the challenges themselves, but whether the very idea of breaking up is an option on the table. If it is, then some people take it. If it's not, then they will keep working at it. You must know people who were terribly suited who make it work. And there are couples who seem perfectly suited that break up. It's a mystery to everyone.

As I've grown older, I've grown more convinced there's nothing that shouldn't be talked about. If we think we're protecting each other, we're not.

Memories are small prayers to God, if we believed in that sort of thing.

Mom told me, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be Grandma, don’t you think?” I told her, “It probably gets pretty lonely to be anyone