There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.

My theory is this: Women falter when they're called on to be highly self-conscious about their talents. Not when they're called on to enact them.

I wasn't prepared for the fact that grief is so unpredictable. It wasn't just sadness, and it wasn't linear. Somehow I'd thought that the first days would be the worst and then it would get steadily better - like getting over the flu. That's not how it was.

Our minds are mysterious; our conscious brain is like a ship on a sea that is obscure to us.

My mother never liked Mother's Day. She thought it was a fake holiday dreamed up by Hallmark to commodify deep sentiments that couldn't be expressed with a card.

I envy my Jewish friends the ritual of saying kaddish - a ritual that seems perfectly conceived, with its built-in support group and its ceremonious designation of time each day devoted to remembering the lost person.