There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation's public school system entitled "Savage Inequalities," Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.

America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.

Hospitals are a little like the beach. The next wave comes in, and the footprints of your pain and suffering, your delivery and recovery, are obliterated.

When I'm falling, my girlfriends are my soft landing.

I hope readers will do what I do when I read a novel I like: talk in ways that will illuminate their own lives.

Raising a child is a little like Picasso's work; in the beginning he did very conventional representational things. Cubism came after he had the rules down pat.

You're like a cake when you're young. You can't rush it or it will fall, or just turn out wrong. Rising takes patience, and heat.