What teenagers want most of all are social rewards, especially the respect of their peers.

We pass our values, ideas and moral character on to our children, but we do that knowing that our children are going to revise our knowledge and reshape their values. There's something very paradoxical and profound about being a parent as opposed to parenting. We put in all this effort and energy not so that we can shape a child of a particular sort, but so that all sorts of possibilities can happen in the future.

It's turns out to be much easier to simulate a grandmaster chess player than it is to simulate a 2-year-old.

We fear death so profoundly, not because it means the end of our body, but because it means the end of our consciousness - better to be a spirit in Heaven than a zombie on Earth.

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.

If parents are the fixed stars in the childs universe, the vaguely understood, distant but constant celestial spheres, siblings are the dazzling, sometimes scorching comets whizzing nearby.

Being a grandmother is a wonderful thing, so my advice is skip the children. Go straight to the grandchildren.