We're all torn between the desire for privacy and the fear of lonliness. We need each other and we need to get away from each other. We need proximity and distance, conversation and silence. We almost always get more of each than we want at any one time.

Familiar things are a comfort to us all.

I am not retiring. Writers don't retire. Writers never stop writing.

The teacher who knows the most about a subject isn't necessarily the one who can teach it best.

One of the things we can be sure of over the July 4th weekend is that news reports will keep telling us how many of us are going to die in automobile accidents.

The dullest Olympic sport is curling, whatever 'curling' means.

In the United States alone, we spend seven times as much on war as on education. There's something wrong there. On this Memorial Day, we should certainly honor those who have died at war, but we should dedicate this day, not so much to their memory, but to the search for a way to end the idiocy of the wars that killed them.