Most important, in order to find real happiness, you must learn to love yourself for the totality of who you are and not just what you look like.

She'd tell me how she'd handle the backhanded compliment by smiling and pretending she was receiving a genuine compliment all the while ignoring their attempt to be insulting. After all, it's the way an insult is received that makes it an insult. You can't really give offense unless someone takes it.

Every animal has its own intelligence and sensitivities. They're all lovely, worthwhile, and deserving of our respect.

Thanks so much, everybody, for making gay marriage legal, thank you for everything you've done-I'm just going to walk through that door

And I somehow always felt less lonely when I was completely alone.

I didn't understand that playing roles in any relationship is false and will inevitably lead to the relationship's collapse. No one can be any one thing all the time.

And dieting, I discovered, was another form of disordered eating, just as anorexia and bulimia similarly disrupt the natural order of eating. "Ordered" eating is the practice of eating when you are hungry and ceasing to eat when your brain sends the signal that your stomach is full. ... All people who live their lives on a diet are suffering. If you can accept your natural body weight and not force it to beneath your body's natural, healthy weight, then you can live your life free of dieting, of restriction, of feeling guilty every time you eat a slice of your kid's birthday cake.