“A line from one of my 1997 columns - 'Do one thing every day that scares you' - is now widely attributed to Eleanor Roosevelt, though I have yet to see any evidence that she ever said it and I don't believe she did. She said some things about fear, but not that thing.”

“Barbie is just a doll.”

“Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world, determined that one day, on the streets of Barcelona, in Berlin's cabarets, in the coffee shops of Istanbul, people will know and love us in our multidimensional glory, dream of us the way they dream of San Francisco and New York.”

“Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, don't put up with those who are reckless with yours.”

“Don't expect anyone else to support you. Maybe you'll have a trust fund. Maybe you'll have a wealthy spouse. But you never know when either of them might run out.”

“Don't waste time on jealousy. Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.”

“Every day each of us wakes up, reaches into drawers and closets, pulls out a costume for the day and proceeds to dress in a style that can only be called preposterous.”

“For some Chicago expats, food is the medicine that blunts the pain of separation.”

“Good art is art that allows you to enter it from a variety of angles and to emerge with a variety of views.”

“Here's a thing about the death of your mother, or anyone else you love: You can't anticipate how you'll feel afterward. People will tell you; a few may be close to right, none exactly right.”

“I couldn't have foreseen all the good things that have followed my mother's death. The renewed energy, the surprising sweetness of grief. The tenderness I feel for strangers on walkers. The deeper love I have for my siblings and friends. The desire to play the mandolin. The gift of a visitation.”

“In twenty years you'll look back at photos of yourself and recall in a way you can't grasp now how much possibility lay before you and how fabulous you really looked.”

“Like many women my age, I am 28 years old.”

“Linda Tripp has shown that a true friend is an archivist, a biographer.”

“On an average day, we allow ourselves the fiction that we own a piece of our workplace. That's part of what it takes to get the job done. Deeper down, we know it's all on loan.”

“One thing you might want to learn before you attend the world's largest ukulele lesson is how to say ukulele.”

“Opening day. All you have to do is say the words and you feel the shutters thrown wide, the room air out, the light pour in. In baseball, no other day is so pure with possibility. No scores yet, no losses, no blame or disappointment. No hangover, at least until the game's over.”

“Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.”

“The first gay person I ever met was surely not the first gay person I ever met.”

“'The Hunger Games' isn't for everybody. But neither is 'Anna Karenina.'”

“The movies we love and admire are to some extent a function of who we are when we see them.”

“TV happens. And once it's happened, it's gone. When it's gone, you move on, no tears, no tantrums, no videotape.”

“Understand that friends come and go, but with a precious few you should hold on. The older you get, the more you need the people who knew you when you were young.”

“You can figure out who you were by which movies you loved when.”

“You can map your life through your favorite movies, and no two people's maps will be the same.”