“It takes 42 muscles to smile. Instead pick up your middle finger and say "bite me!”

“It takes 43 muscles to frown and 3 to raise the middle finger.”

“Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.”

“They say your muscles have memory. Once you've trained your arms to swing a tennis racket or your legs to ride a bike, you can quit for a while - years even - and all it takes is picking up a racket or jumping on a bike again and your muscles remember what to do. They snap right back to performing the way you taught them. The heart is a muscle, too. And I've been training mine since I was a kid to fall in love with one particular person.”

“I grab a snap pea and bite off the end of it, and then I pick up my glass of milk. I'm overwhelmed by the emptiness in my middle that food won't fill.”

“I smile a lot. I heard someone say once that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, so i'm trying it out.”