A week in the hospital she had told us. A hysterectomy, she had said. It had seemed unremarkable to me in a woman of forty-six long finished with childbearing, although every day that I grow older I realize there is never anything unremarkable about losing any part of what makes you female - a breast, a womb, a child, a man.

I think a lot of people, but particularly a lot of women, get to this stage when I'd say they're over 50. We face a lot of hard judgment from the world, we women. If you're a full-time mother, you should be out working. If you're out working, your kids must be being overlooked.

New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.

On social welfare the Church does so much good around the world - nuns running schools and homeless shelters, priests ministering to people who are in crisis.

It's so much easier to write a resume than to craft a spirit.

Get a life. A real life. Not a manic pursuit of the next promotion, the bigger paycheck, the larger house.

The pursuit of otherness, the sense that we are somehow different than our brothers and sisters, no matter where we find them, allows for all the other great evils: racism, sexism, homophobia, violence against gay people and against women.