If you want to understand any woman you must first ask about her mother and then listen carefully. Stories about food show a strong connection. Wistful silences demonstrate unfinished business. The more a daughter knows about the details of her mother's life - without flinching or whining - the stronger the daughter.

As a journalist I'm comfortable doing library research, and I did a lot! I had a fellowship at Radcliff for a year which gave me access to the Harvard system.

There's something almost adolescent about Whitman's paean to everything that was and remains good about America.

One of his tears fell in my mouth, where it became a blue sapphire, source of strength, source of strength and eternal hope.

They sang the words in unison, yet somehow created a web of sounds with their voices. It was like hearing a piece of fabric woven with all the colors of a rainbow. I did not know that such beauty could be formed by the human mouth. I had never heard harmony before.

There's nothing quite like a real . . . train conductor to add color to a quotidian commute

It's a wonder that any mother ever called a daughter Dinah again. But some did. Maybe you guessed that there was more to me than the voiceless cipher in the text. Maybe you heard it in the music of my name: the first vowel high and clear, as when a mother calls to her child at dusk; the second sound soft, for whispering secrets on pillows. Dee-nah.