an the president bring out the voters who were so enthusiastic about him in 2008 and seem a little disenchanted now? Can he bring out young people? Can he bring out Latinos? Can he bring out those white suburban moms?

Writing seems to be the only profession people imagine you can do by thinking about doing it.

Sometimes I remind myself that I almost skipped the party, that I almost went to a different college, that the whim of a minute could have changed everything and everyone. Our lives, so settled, so specific, are built on happenstance.

And sometimes you do everything right and something bad just happens. It's as simple, and as scary, as that.

Your children make it impossible to regret your past. They're its finest fruits. Sometimes the only ones.

This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.

I think Americans suspect, without even being able to articulate it, that we're at the end of the American century; that we're at the end of the 100 or 125 or 150 years when we were the undisputed arbiter and leader of the world.