I don't have an appropriate label for this sort of post

There are many things I love, food aside. Like words, to name just one other thing. And what wonderful, wonderful words I've been reading these last few days. I'm swelling up inside with happiness, and I decided that it would be nice to have some of my favorites collected here, both serious and not so serious.

"America can mean what it says. It can respect its friends and probe its enemies before it tries to shock and awe them. It can listen. It can rediscover the commonwealth beyond the frenzied individualism that took down Wall Street."

-- Roger Cohen, from the New York Times

"For as long as we can remember, we have been Europe's fat, awkward friend, the friend that it didn't really like but had to hang around with because of circumstance. Europe disapproved of our flashy, loud, aggressive parents and was disgusted by what they perceived as our own flaccid response to them. And no matter how hard we tried with Europe, despite the fact that we let them raid our closets (and our clothes always looked better on them than us), and were bend-over-backward nice and flattering and totally self-deprecating, in the end they'd always just look at us like, "Do you really want to eat those fries?" But now, finally, we have done something to impress Europe."

-- Jessica Pressler, from New York Magazine

"What I love about America---what I've always loved about America, why I moved here in the first place, why I'll probably never leave---is that absolutely anything is possible. People come here seeking themselves, they come to make things better, and if you're lucky enough to be born here? Well then, gracious, you can be whatever you want to be: even the president of the United States.

"Shakespeares are this day being born on the banks of the Ohio," wrote Melville in Moby Dick, a line that's stuck with me ever since I read it in a musty classroom years and years ago. Thank god for a country where we still believe that and where we get to prove---not just in this election, but time and time again---that it's true."

-- Holly, from Nothing But Bonfires

"I believe that during the campaign McCain’s great friend Senator Lindsey Graham said something along the line of promising to drown himself if North Carolina went for Obama. I believe I speak for us all, Senator Graham, when I say that we are feeling extremely mellow today and you do not have to follow through."

-- Gail Collins, from the New York Times

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"In America, a man is not held responsible for choosing his parents, only for his own life and conduct. This man promises to take us into a new era where we aren't defined by our differences, Short vs. Tall, Pale vs. Freckled, and can take a deep breath and do what's best for the country."

-- Garrison Keillor, from The Old Scout