Like most women, I remember my first drink in tender minutiae.

I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight...I agree.

But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

I’ve been thinking I’d like to be Daisy; I’d like to have someone like Gatsby stare at my house for whole years and never stop dreaming of me

I think statistics go in one ear and out the other. All of us respond to stories more than numbers.

I think for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.

I have been a ballerina, a cheerleader and a sorority girl. I was the girliest girl alive.

Me? I'm just a literary girl gone wrong. Slow with the tongue. Quick with the pen. Undeniably cute. But, on the whole, ill-equipped for the privilege of living.

I can’t help thinking about memoir as a down-and-up process: Dive down for color; come up for context. Sink back down for action; climb back up for self-awareness and gratitude.

For the first month of school, writing is its own upper. Pounding on my computer keys feels like playing the piano, like arranging words into harmony that sings back to me.

I'm trying to figure out precisely which character flaw might be responsible for my latest life failure.

Just think of what would have happened to poor old Naaman if he had decided to dunk himself only once?

You are a lawmaker in your own right.

I was forced to live far beyond my years when just a child now I have reversed the order and I intend to remain young indefinitely.

For businesses, biomimicry is about bringing a new discipline - biology - to the design table. It's not to write an environmental impact statement, as most biologists in business do right now.

All I asked for was equality and independence. A rotating chairmanship might have been the answer.

The other night, the president gave a speech. He said, "children are our most prescious natural resource". I thought, "let's hope it never comes to that".

People say life begins at conception, I say life began about a billion years ago and it's a continuous process.

The constant desire of pleasing which is the peculiar quality of some, may be called the happiest of all desires in this that it rarely fails of attaining its end when not disgraced by affectation.

A good listener is usually thinking about something else.

People charged with drug offenses, though, are typically poor people of color. They are routinely charged with felonies and sent to prison.