Judith Viorst

Strength is the capacity to break a Hershey bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.

I had lived with my mother in anger and love - I suppose most daughters do - but my children only knew her in one way: As the lady who thought they were smarter than Albert Einstein. As the lady who thought they wrote better than William Shakespeare. As the lady who thought every picture they drew was a Rembrandt.

I always credited my mother with inspiring me to be a writer because she was such a passionate reader. She read poetry to me as a child. But rather late in life, I've come to appreciate my father, the accountant. He was a solid, organized, get-the-job-done kind of person-and you need that piece of it to be a writer, too.

One advantage of marriage is that, when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you, it keeps you together until you fall in again.

You end up as you deserve. In old age you must put up with the face, the friends, the health, and the children you have earned.

Close friends contribute to our personal growth. They also contribute to our personal pleasure, making the music sound sweeter, the wine taste richer, the laughter ring louder because they are there.

Strength is the capacity to break a chocolate bar into four pieces with your bare hands - and then eat just one of the pieces.

In history class, I wrote a poem, 'The Royalists and the Roundheads.' I would write poems about driftwood in art class and little stories about the sun, moon, and stars in science class. Since not many kids were writing in class, I got away with it.

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident, a tight girdle, a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.

We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.

As Spinoza or someone very much like him once said . . .

Love is much nicer to be in than an automobile accident a tight girdle a higher tax bracket or a holding pattern over Philadelphia.

Love is the same as like except you feel sexier.

Infatuation is when you think that he's as sexy as Robert Redford as smart as Henry Kissinger as noble as Ralph Nader as funny as Woody Allen and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen as smart as Jimmy Conners as funny as Ralph Nader as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford-but you'll take him anyway.

Infatuation is when you think he's as sexy as Robert Redford as smart as Henry Kissinger as noble as Ralph Nader as funny as Woody Allen and as athletic as Jimmy Conners. Love is when you realize that he's as sexy as Woody Allen as smart as Jimmy Connors as funny as Ralph Nader as athletic as Henry Kissinger and nothing like Robert Redford - but you'll take him anyway.

One advantage of marriage it seems to me is that when you fall out of love with him or he falls out of love with you it keeps you together until you maybe fall in love again.

I hope the next time you get a double-decker strawberry ice-cream cone the ice cream part falls off the cone and lands in Australia.

If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save, He says he'd save me.