Do not read beauty magazines. They will only make you feel ugly.

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

Enjoy the power and beauty of your youth. Oh, never mind. You will not understand the power and beauty of your youth until they've faded. But trust me, in 20 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. You are not as fat as you imagine.

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.

Get to know your parents. You never know when they'll be gone for good. Be nice to your siblings. They're your best link to your past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future.

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

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

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere.

Read the directions, even if you don't follow them.

The cell phone has transformed public places into giant phone-a-thons in which callers exist within narcissistic cocoons of private conversations. Like faxes, computer modems and other modern gadgets that have clogged out lives with phony urgency, cell phones represent the 20th Century's escalation of imaginary need. We didn't need cell phones until we had them. Clearly, cell phones cause not only a breakdown of courtesy, but the atrophy of basic skills.

The most pressing questions are the naive ones.

The soul-sucking activity of TV-watching feels better when it is done with other souls.

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