I used to anticipate my childhood birthday parties as if each were an annual coronation. Like most kids, I loved sitting at the head of the table with a crown on my head.

It's smart to be friends with one's sex partner but dumb to have sex with one's friends.

Friends seem to be like aspirin; we don't really know why they make a sick person feel better, but they do.

If knowledge is power, clandestine knowledge is power squared; it can be withheld, exchanged, and leveraged.

If the Richter scale could measure human calamities, the loss of a child would register a ten.

Why hope to live a long life if we're only going to fill it with self-absorption, body maintenance and image repair? When we die, do we want people to exclaim 'She looked ten years younger,' or do we want them to say 'She lived a great life'?

Friends can be said to "fall in like" with as profound a thud as romantic partners fall in love.