The difference between government and leadership is that leadership has a soul.

We're tortured, a lot of us, believe me.

I like to say that my mother had a very ordinary life. From the outside it didn't look like there was anything particularly special or wonderful about it, but when you watch somebody hold on to that life with both hands, it makes you think that life must be pretty damn good.

She say guilt is a useless emotion." "Oh, please," says Nancy. "Guilt is what separates humans from animals.

Every reader, I suspect, has a book like this somewhere in his or her past, a book that seemed to hold within it, at that moment, all the mysteries of the universe.

Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.

I would be the most content if my children grew up to be the kind of people who think decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.