Rarely do we invest the time to open the book of another's life. When we do, we are usually surprised to find its cover so misleading and its reviews so flawed.

At one time in my career, Barnes and Noble bookstores categorized my books as religious fiction.

There's a problem with marrying up. You always worry that someday they'll see through you and leave. Or, worse yet, someone better will come along and take her. In my case, it wasn't someone. And it wasn't something better.

Life is the soil, our choices and actions the sun and rain, but our dreams are the seeds.

Like all living things, love, too, struggles against hardship, and in the process sheds its fatuous skin to expose one composed of more than just a storm of emotion-one of loyalty and divine friendship. And though it may be temporarily blinded by adversity, it never gives in or up, holding tight to lofty ideals that transcend this earth and time- while its counterfeit simply concludes it was mistaken and quickly runs off to find the next real thing.

. . . Harboring an emotion as powerful as gratitude has power of its own.

We cannot enslave others without enslaving a part of ourselves.