CYNTHIA HEIMEL

Never judge someone by who he's in love with; judge him by his friends. People fall in love with the most appalling people. Take a cool, appraising glance at his pals.

We have no faith in ourselves. I have never met a woman who, deep down in her core, really believes she has great legs. And if she suspects that she might have great legs, then she's convinced that she has a shrill voice and no neck.

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself. There is a microscopically thin line between being brilliantly creative and acting like the most gigantic idiot on earth. So what the hell, leap.

Wearing makeup is an apology for our actual faces.

The country is suffering from musical-chairs syndrome. We all dance around for a bit and then when we try to sit down again, somebody doesn't have a chair. We're running scared; we want ours.

Dogs are us, only innocent.

Men, being conditioned badly, are always feeling nooses closing around their necks, even dumpy boors no girl would take on a bet.

[On peanut M&Ms:] It is the eggness of them. A shell, chocolate placenta, proteiny peanut baby. Life shape, birth shape, cell shape, protoplasmic-ooze shape. A shape that calls straight through civilization to our reptilian brains.

The Pain-Free Shopping Method: Buy a present for you, then a present for a friend. Then another present for you. Then a present for a friend. Then two presents for you. Then a present for a friend. Then go home, get into bed, and pull up the covers.

A comedian is not funny unless he is taking his demons out for a walk.

The media know exactly what they're doing, focusing our attention on Arsenio's hairdo. We need to keep our brains brimming with rubbish. If we didn't, we might think about things.

Los Angeles people are incapable of passively mainlining TV and movies. Here you have to read who produced or directed every episode, who wrote it, who had guests shots and whether you know them personally and if they like you. You have to figure out who everybody's agent is and whether yours is better. You not only know but deeply care about the difference between such job titles as Producer, Supervising Producer, and Executive Story Editor. ... So while the rest of the country is lying stupid in a media-induced coma, people in L.A. are in constant withdrawal.

Infidelity is such a pretty word, so light and delicate. Whereas the act itself is dark and thick with guilt, betrayal, confusion, pain, and (okay) sometimes enormous pleasure.

Contrary to popular cable TV-induced opinion, aerobics have nothing to do with squeezing our body into hideous shiny Spandex, grinning like a deranged orangutan, and doing cretinous steps to debauched disco music.

We must eschew anything trivial. We must embrace all that is frivolous.... Trivial things take up all your time and dull your senses, whereas frivolity is meaningful, profound, worth living and dying for.... If we devote our lives to frivolity, the world will be a far, far better place. Humanity will be better able to fulfill its primary goal, that of having a good time.

In New York we have streets exploding and innocent Buddhist girls being stabbed in the neck and cabdrivers refusing to help her. If we happen into a nightclub by mistake, when we leave the doorman will be lying in the street surrounded by police.

Friends are the twenty-first-century version of extended families.

When in doubt, make a fool of yourself.

Homework, root canals, and deadlines are the important things in life, and only when we have these major dramas taken care of can we presume to look at the larger questions.

A person who uses party as a verb is a person who will walk into a shop and walk out wearing a rubber jumpsuit.

Your whole being is involved in taking care of someone else, worrying about what they think of you, how they treat you, how you can make them treat you better. Right now everyone in the world seems to think that they are codependent and that they come from dysfunctional families. They call it codependency. I call it the human condition.

Lots of you know me as a lone, hard-bitten columnist, prone to lurking on deserted rocky promontories while searching for my muse.

The only women who don't believe that sexual harassment is a real problem in this country are women who have never been in the workplace.

You love somebody, and then you don't love them anymore. But if you really love somebody, you always love them, don't you? Isn't there always some small part of you that reads their horoscope in the paper everyday?

Swingers are all from the suburbs and consequently brain-addled by car pools, shopping malls, and welcome wagons.