Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.

Not listening is probably the commonest unkindness of married life, and one that creates - more devastatingly than an eternity of forgotten birthdays and misguided Christmas gifts - an atmosphere of not loving and not caring.

READ! Books can be as delicious as hot-fudge sundaes, as funny as clowns, as exciting as a baseball game that's tied in the 9th inning, and as beautiful as the best sunset you ever saw.

When he is late for dinner and I know he must be either having an affair or lying dead in the street, I always hope he's dead.

I went to sleep with gum in my mouth and now there's gum in my hair and when I got out of bed this morning I tripped on the skateboard and by mistake I dropped my sweater in the sink while the water was running and I could tell it was going to be a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.

Absence makes the heart grow frozen, not fonder.