“Some emotions don’t make a lot of noise. It’s hard to hear pride. Caring is real faint – like a heartbeat. And pure love – why, some days it’s so quiet, you don’t even know it’s there.”

For years, my husband and I have advocated separate vacations. But the kids keep finding us.

When you look like your passport photo, it’s time to go home.

A grandparent is the only baby-sitter who doesn’t charge more after midnight – or anything before midnight.

Encourage independence in your children by regularly losing them in the supermarket.

I was trampled to death by a man who believed his luggage would be the first piece off. If he were an experienced traveler, he would know that the first piece of luggage belongs to no one. It’s just a dummy suitcase to give everyone hope.

My kids always perceived the bathroom as a place where you wait it out until all the groceries are unloaded from the car.

It is not until you become a mother that your judgment slowly turns to compassion and understanding.

A grandparent will help you with your buttons, your zippers, and your shoelaces and not be in any hurry for you to grow up.

Time. It hangs heavy for the bored, eludes the busy, flies by the for young, and runs out for the aged.

The odds of going to the store for a loaf of bread and coming out with only a loaf of bread are three billion to one.

There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt.

It is my theory you can’t get rid of fat. All you can do is move it around, like furniture.

No one ever died from sleeping in an unmade bed.

I worry about scientists discovering that lettuce has been fattening all along.

The hippopotamus is a vegetarian and looks like a wall. Lions who eat only red meat are sleek and slim. Are nutritionists on the wrong track?

I remember thinking how often we look, but never see … we listen, but never hear … we exist, but never feel. We take our relationships for granted. A house is only a place. It has no life of its own. It needs human voices, activity and laughter to come alive.