The misdeeds of ordinary men can be buried with them, and their lives described in half-truths that are really half-lies. But not a public man. Particularly not this one.

In books I have traveled, not only to other worlds, but into my own.

In the family sandwich, the older people and the younger ones can recognize one another as the bread. Those in the middle are, for a time, the meat.

Adolescence is a tough time for parent and child alike. It is a time between: between childhood and maturity, between parental protection and personal responsibility, between life stage- managed by grown-ups and life privately held.

It's what the Taliban does in Afghanistan, it's what gets done in the Middle East, and it's clearly something that certain mainly conservative groups in the United States would like to do. They miss the good old days, when men were men and women were nothing.

Testosterone does not have to be toxic.

If I had to guess what the new Etch-A-Sketch picture is going to be like, it's going to be considerably less to the right. Romney has backed himself into a couple of corners that I don't think will serve him well in the general election, the main one being very harsh stands on immigration, which I think are not only short-sighted but to my mind immoral.