We're all impostors to ourselves. By that I mean that we know instinctively, intimately, the difference between whom we are inside and who we appear to be to others. Most of the time - when we aren't flat lying about something or playing a particularly stylized role in some heightened dramatic situation - this difference between the internal and the external is modest and manageable.

Sometimes, when a person is truly lost in this world, suffocating inside her private bubble where all she can hear is her own droning heartbeat, a touch can be enough.

Art, art of any kind, shows that folks are trying.

Memo to extreme partisans: If you can't bring yourselves to love your enemies, can you at least learn to hate your friends?

When Loughner himself speaks and we find out his real influences are Spiderman, 'Gnome Chomsky,' Taylor Swift, and Dr. Bronner, then what?

It's no accident that most self-help groups use 'anonymous' in their names; to Americans, the first step toward redemption is a ritual wiping out of the self, followed by the construction of a new one.

I still believe in love. I always will. It's my blessing and my burden.