Beware the cute, hot guy who kind of reminds you of the parent you don't get along with: your cold, distant father who left when you were a kid or your hot-tempered mother whom you could never please.

whenever I encountered a slide show titled 'Eight Diet Foods That Pack on the Pounds' or 'Celebrity Fashion Fails,' I'd have to stop and investigate because hey, it might be information I'd need in some unforeseeable future where I had become, for some reason, a fat celebrity.

They were soul mates, my mother and father. They claimed to adore each other, as if the word 'adore' meant 'argue with ceaselessly.

Conversely, beware the man who does nothing but ask you questions about yourself and offers no information about himself. Not only is he keeping you at bay, he is probably not listening to your answers.

Every moment of your life that is not a complete nightmare is happiness.

my mother ... took the fact that my taste differed from hers as a personal insult.

our culture is definitely the eighth grade. It's run by eighth-grade boys, and the way these boys show a girl they like her is by humiliating her and making her cry.