If there's a sexier sound on this planet than the person you're in love with cooing over the crepes you made for him, I don't know what it is.

People want to care about people. People look after each other, given the chance. ... I believe just believing in goodness generates a tiny bit of the stuff, so that being so foolish as to believe in our better natures, if just for a day, we actually contribute to the sum total of generosity in the universe.

Metz's Perfection chronicles with lapidary precision one woman's climb back to happiness after not just a spouse's death, but also the shocking recognition that her life before that death was not what she had thought it was. The journey is a painful one, but Ms. Metz is much the stronger for having survived to recount it.

So the end may be a long time coming, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have a way of sneaking up on you.

The blog is certainly another tool for writers out there to break their way in. But being a blogger does not make you a great writer.

I got my undergrad in Creative Writing, and then I didn't get my Masters in obsession, because I figured I already had that covered.

You can never have too much, butter.