Figuring out who you are is the whole point of the human experience.

I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.

People who wish to salute the free and independent side of their evolutionary character acquire cats. People who wish to pay homage to their servile and salivating roots own dogs.

The dark aftermath of the frontier, of the vast promise of possibility this country first offered, is an inflated sense of American entitlement today. We want what we want, and we want it now. Easy credit. Fast food. A straight shot down the interstate from point A to point B. The endless highway is crowded with the kinds of cars large enough to take a mountain pass in high snow. Instead they are used to take children from soccer practice to Pizza Hut. In the process they burn fuel like there's no tomorrow. Tomorrow's coming.

Children should have enough freedom to be themselves - once they've learned the rules.

Whether talking about addiction, taxation [on cigarettes] or education [about smoking], there is always at the center of the conversation an essential conundrum: How come we're selling this deadly stuff anyway?

The beginning and the end are never really the journey of discovery for me. It is the middle that remains a puzzle until well into the writing. That's how life is most of the time, isn't it? You know where you are and where you hope to wind up. It's the getting there that's challenging.