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.

There are times with your friends when you just have to put their whole mess out of your mind for a while.

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.

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.

Cooking saved my life! Sure, there were some miserable moments, but that was sort of the point, to find something challenging and consuming enough to take a place in the center of my life into which was creeping a horrible feeling of stasis and the doom of mediocrity.

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.

But hard bitten cynicism leaves one feeling peevish, and too much of it can do lasting damage to your heart.