Your characters should be as smart as you are, if not smarter.

Once or twice a week I would set my alarm for six A.M. so I could get up and plug in Hot Stix...I would study the curls in the mirror, impressed with both the appliance and my newfound ability to use it. Then, without fail, at the last second before leaving for school, I would ask myself, "Am I supposed to brush it out or leave it?" Why could I never remember" That feeling of "I'm pretty sure this next step is wrong, but I'm just gonna do it anyway" is part of the same set of instincts that makes me such a great cook.

Then she took out a speculum the size of a milk shake machine. Even Michelle Duggar would have flinched at this thing, but I had never seen one before.

Pentagon records show that at least 8,000 members of the all-volunteer U.S. Army have deserted since the Iraq war began. Hey, at least somebody has an exit strategy.

Some people work with a trainer, some people work with a stylist. I work with a celebrity fecalist. A fecalist is basically a person who comes and collects my stools, and then examines them to see if I'm eating right and if I should be drinking more water and what my moods should be.

...I can't possibly take time off for a second baby, unless I do, in which case that is nobody's business and I'll never regret it for a moment unless it ruins my life.

My parents raised me that you never ask people about their reproductive plans. “You don’t know their situation,” my mom would say. I considered it such an impolite question that for years I didn’t even ask myself. Thirty-five turned into forty faster than McDonald’s food turns into cold nonfood.