If your sister is in a tearing hurry to go out and cannot catch your eye, she's wearing your best sweater.

If there is a heaven, it's certain our animals are to be there. Their lives become so interwoven with our own, it would take more than an archangel to detangle them.

Becoming a grandmother is wonderful. One moment you're just a mother. The next you are all-wise and prehistoric.

Loss leaves us empty - but learn not to close your heart and mind in grief. Allow life to replenish you. When sorrow comes it seems impossible - but new joys wait to fill the void.

It should be possible to exist with only a short shelf of books, to read and give away. After all - we may not open a book, once read, for ten years or more. But the act of reading has made it part of us - to relinquish it would be to lose an extension of our being.

We have become a society where the artist is regarded as a self-indulgent superfluity, and the person who juggles stocks and shares is an essential part of the economy.

Medicines may be necessary. Flowers lift the heart. But your smile is the best restorative of all.