Barbie is just a doll.

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.

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

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Barbie is just a doll.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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

Worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum.

Chicago is constantly auditioning for the world determined that one day on the streets of Barcelona in Berlins 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.

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.

Don't be reckless with other people's hearts, and don't put up with people that are reckless with yours.

Replace the words "have to" with "get to" and watch how the cold rain on your life changes to sunshine.

It's so important to have a great relationship with your physician. It's one of those essential relationships that I find to be as important to nurture as any other relationship in your life. Without your health, you have nothing.

I was one of those children they used to call 'readers.'

The best executive is the one who has sense enough to pick good men to do what he wants done, and self-restraint enough to keep from meddling with them while they do it.

Having an aim is the key to achieving your best.

I think some people like me because I'm different. I don't think like everybody else. People are so tied up in the worst parts of technology these days. They live a life pressing buttons. They don't use their imaginations.

There is no trophy for the team that sails the most.

I let things roll right off me. I don't stay mad long.

I mean, what would I be doing if I couldn't write? But that fortunately hasn't proved to be the case and I can read any day. I still read a lot, and I can write any day, but much more slowly and fewer words.

We see past time in a telescope and present time in a microscope. Hence the apparent enormities of the present.

It is so fantastic being an actress because you have the chance to be a thousand different people when you act.

Yes, The Persuaders, that was great fun because one of my favourite actors is Roger Moore.

Predating the Internet and predating videos, you had an active imagination. You would hear sounds and then get mental pictures of what these sounds felt like to you. It engaged you and made you more invested in it. It made you want to get tickets to the show, buy the album, put the poster on the wall. Now it's sensory overload.

It took me a long time to get comfortable with the idea of being photographed by a moving or still camera.

There are things that I invented - the creaky geriatric robot that is always grumpy, for example, or the little wheelie guy, he's not in the Hasbro lore. But kids love that stuff - this little guy as a pet on a chain. They gravitate towards it.

I think you have to love the characters that you write. I don't know how you could possibly write a TV show where you didn't love the characters.

Ireland and its people have much to be proud of. Yet every land and its people have moments of shame. Dealing with the failures of our past, as a country, as a Church, or as an individual is never easy. Our struggle to heal the wounds of decades of violence, injury and painful memory in Northern Ireland are more than ample evidence of this.

I have a great relationship with everyone in my family, but I'm closer to my brothers than anyone else because they give me a lot of guidance.

Friendship is certainly the finest balm for the pangs of disappointed love.