My pet-sitting day ends around sunset, and it's very satisfying to know that I've made several living beings happy that day. That I left their food bowls sparkling clean and fresh water in their water bowls. That I brushed them so their coats shined, and played with them until all our hearts were beating faster. That I kissed them goodbye and left them with their tails wagging or flipping or at least raised in a happy kind of way. That's a heck of a lot more than any president, pope, prime minister, or potentate can say, and I wouldn't switch places with any of them.

They say God never gives us more than we can handle, but sometimes I think God has overestimated what I can take.

Protecting people from the truth is another way of shutting them out.

Perfume companies ought to bottle the smell of crisp bacon. Forget pheromones. I’ll bet a woman with a little spot of bacon grease behind her ears would attract every male within a five-mile radius.

I pulled the dress out of the bag and held it in front of me. Ella sat up straighter and squinted her eyes, while Michael and Paco made the noises men make when a woman says, “What do you think?” Fathers probably teach those noises to their sons when they’re young—“Stand up when you’re introduced to a lady, use your napkin instead of your sleeve, and make admiring noises when a woman shows you anything, no matter what it is, and asks you what you think about it. Never, never, never say you have no opinion.

I love the unabashed over-buttered, over-creamed, deep-fried, gooey, over-sugared excessiveness of Amish food,

Now here's the thing about being a little off-center; you're never sure if you're a bona fide loon or if you have insight that other people don't have.You have to navigate through life using a kind of psychic gyroscope to keep from falling too far one way or another, and you feel a peculiar kinship with other people who are also a little bit off-center.