People project all sorts of emotions onto their cats, and cats like it that way.

There was no known cure for a Catholic education.

The thing about love is that we can't control whether we get it, but we can control whether we give it. And each feels as good as the other. Your heart doesn't know if it's loving a man, a book, or a puppy. If your heart were that smart, it would be your brain.

I am really, I think, truly an easygoing, positive, fun person.

But the fact is, I'm not work-identified. I'm not a lawyer or a writer. I'm a mom, and I'm a woman, and that's the kind of people I want to see in books in the starring role.

Nobody was ever replaced in life, no hole completely filled or loss totally healed. You didn't need a medical degree to know that the human body really wasn't stronger in the broken places. Like any bone, the cracks would always show if you looked hard enough.

And wouldn't we be better off if every New Year's, we thought about the things we did right and we resolved to keep doing them, no matter how wacky they were.