Faith Salie

“Famous people I've interviewed - powerful people, brilliant people, people whom you look at and think, 'Seriously, do you not have pores?' - have turned to me after interviews and asked, 'Was I okay? I hope I was okay.'”

“Real love is more than a one-time, seemingly iron-clad pledge that we will never be apart. If you're over 20, you've probably figured out that meaningful love isn't constricting; it doesn't chain you to one place or to each other.”

“It's fitting that an insult largely aimed at youth has made children of those who use it. 'Snowflake' reminds us how much we need climate change... in politics.”

“To my knowledge, there are, pretty much, two ways to be interesting: One is to actually do interesting things, achieve the remarkable. The other way to be interesting is to be interested, curious about the world and about other people - not relentlessly revelatory about yourself.”

“I have no problem being full-term pregnant and do not understand women who say, 'I can't wait to get this baby out of me!'”

“The custom of clasping hands is thought to date back thousands of years, as proof of not holding any weapons.”

“I asked God for a healthy baby. An answer arrived in my daughter.”

“Hours after I gave birth to my first child, my husband cradled all five pounds of our boy and said, gently, 'Hi, Sweetpea.' Not 'Buddy' or 'Little Man.' Sweetpea. The word filled me with unanticipated comfort.”

“Any responsible essayist or memoir writer who's writing about herself is not just saying, 'Here's what happened,' and opening up her diary. There needs to be consideration of other people's feelings.”

“We all think Al Gore invented email so we could save time and save paper, to save trees. And that includes phone trees.”

“Are we a people who put politics over integrity? Or are we a country of voters and leaders, men and women, husbands and wives, fathers and mothers, colleagues, humans who care about treating each other with basic dignity?”

“Contrary to the negative stereotype that folks who swear have poor vocabularies, a fluency in taboo language correlates with overall verbal fluency. The more words you know, the more you know... and the more colorfully you can express yourself, with nuance, metaphor, and emotion.”

“John Travolta is getting old, despite what his hair is trying to tell us.”

“A leader who cobbles together his self-esteem by attempting to silence or libel his critics and by amplifying his echo chamber is a dangerous one indeed.”

“Wanting to be loved and appreciated connects us all.”

“Nothing ages you more immediately than being called 'Mrs.'”

“When I was a kid, we called every teacher, every parent - anyone over the age of 20, it seemed - 'Mr. or Mrs. so-and-so.'”

“They say there are no atheists in foxholes, and in the foxhole of my divorce, I found solace in walking to St. Patrick's Cathedral and lighting candles.”

“Having grown up Catholic, my prayers were scripted - memorized and deployed in church and before bed. As a young adult, I veered off script and talked to God more plainly. And by 'talked to,' I mean that I basically asked for things to turn out the way I wanted them to.”

“Divorce court seemed to inspire in my girlfriends 1940s-era fashion fantasies, not only for me, but for themselves.”