Becoming an adult means leaving the world of your parents and starting to make your way toward the future that you will share with your peers.

People talked about being a parent, or being a mother or a father. We don't talk about "wiving" our husbands or "friending" our friends, or "childing" our parents. We just talk about being in a relationship with those people. You don't measure whether your marriage was good based on whether or not your husband is better now than he was 10 years ago, or whether your friend is richer than when they first became your friend. The relationships between parents and children is a kind of love, rather than a kind of work.

The brain knows the real secret of seduction, more effective than even music and martinis. Just keep whispering, 'Gee, you are really special' to that sack of water and protein that is a body, and you can get it to do practically anything.

Adults often assume that most learning is the result of teaching and that exploratory, spontaneous learning is unusual. But actually, spontaneous learning is more fundamental.

The radio was an improvement on the telegraph but it didn't have the same exponential, transformative effect.

Texts and e-mails travel no faster than phone calls and telegrams, and their content isn't necessarily richer or poorer.

Babies and young children are like the research and development division of the human species, and we grown-ups are production and marketing.