"Brits and Americans have hundreds of different phrases for the same thing. Luckily, it's usually a source of amusement rather than frustration. A flashlight by any other name is still a torch. My personal favourite is 'fairy lights,' which we boringly refer to as 'Christmas lights.'"

"You can't possibly fathom the ins and outs of a prepubescent beauty treatment until you've felt the strange but exhilarating tingle of a cottage-cheese-and-Pop-Rocks facial."

"Alaska is what happens when Willy Wonka and the witch from Hansel and Gretel elope, buy a place together upstate, renounce their sweet teeth, and turn into health fanatics."

"It's funny. People often compare me to other humor essayists. They're usually quite nice comparisons I will accept those gladly. But I am always sort of appalled at the idea of being lumped with other, more chick-y female writers. And the truth is probably that neither comparison is accurate."

"Reason is the torch that illuminates the dark corridors of superstition. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."

"A dream nurtured by daily toil will inevitably outshine a wish born of idle hope. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."

"Serenity begins the moment you cease demanding that the external world conform. A lesson woven into the fabric of human history."

"It takes a long time to bring the past up to the present."