I am a journalist in the field of etiquette. I try to find out what the most genteel people regularly do, what traditions they have discarded, what compromises they have made.

Good manners have much to do with the emotions. To make them ring true, one must feel them, not merely exhibit them.

Parents must get across the idea that "I love you always, but sometimes I do not love your behavior."

When we learn to give thanks, we are learning to concentrate not on the bad things, but on the good things in our lives.

Everyone knows that a man can marry even if he reaches the age of 102, is penniless, and has all his facilities gone. There is always some woman willing to take a chance on him.

Only a great fool or a great genius is likely to flout all social grace with impunity, and neither one, doing so, makes the most comfortable companion.

The modern rule is that every woman should be her own chaperon.

Breakfast is the one meal at which it is permissible to read the paper.

We must learn which ceremonies may be breached occasionally at our convenience and which ones may never be if we are to live pleasantly with our fellow man.

The best-dressed women I know pay very little attention to the picayune aspects of fashion, but they have a sound understanding of style.

Do not smoke without asking permission or sit so near (as in a train) that the smoke might annoy.

Black holes are where God divided by zero.

When your words enter the material world in the form of ink or on screen, you are immediately afforded the opportunity to judge their worth.

I often fear to talk so occasionally I express my opinions and my love in writing.

When two persons are too close, they fall apart.

There was silence in her head and silence beneath her window, and still she could not sleep.

Ironically, parenting is a shame and judgment minefield precisely because most of us are wading through uncertainty and self-doubt when it comes to raising our children.

Nothing gives me quite so much joy as when people tell me they've had their pets spayed or neutered.

The habit of shedding blood, or even of seeing it shed, corrupts all sentiment of humanity.

I love when people work together who know each other very well. Some of my favourite movies are people who are close friends or families.

I have a 12-year-old daughter, and all the time people will say, 'Oh, she's young!" and you'd be so surprised what you can learn from that 12-year-old if you just opened up your mind.