Maybe I needed to make like a potato, winnow myself down, be part of something that was not easy, just simple.

Nowadays anyone with a crap laptop and an Internet connection can sound their barbaric yawp, whatever it may be.

Doors are going to open-doors you can't even imagine exist.

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.

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

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.

Maybe I needed to make like a potato, winnow myself down, be part of something that was not easy, just simple.