Be nice to your siblings. They are your link to the past and the people most likely to stick with you in the future..

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

Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room..

The secret to happiness, at Thanksgiving or any time, is to find pleasure in imperfection..

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 I….

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

The secret to happiness, at Thanksgiving or any time, is to reframe obligation as opportunity. You don't have to spend Thanksgiving with your family.….

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

Don't worry about the future. Or worry, but know that worrying is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubble gum. The real….

Don’t feel guilty if you don’t know what you want to do with your life…the most interesting people I know didn’t know at 22 what they wanted to do wi….

Do one thing every day that scares you. The race is long and, in the end, it's only with yourself..

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 m….

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

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 yo….

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

Don't waste your time on jealousy..

Families are ecosystems. Each life grows in response to the lives around it.

Maybe you’ll marry, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll have children, maybe you won’t, maybe you’ll divorce at 40, maybe you’ll dance the funky chicken on….

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 da….

Reading is a discount ticket to everywhere..

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