Barack Obama presents as kind of a cool character, and I think that that's his natural personality.

The life you have led doesn't need to be the only life you have.

A finished person is a boring person.

Raising children is a spur-of-the-moment, seat-of-the-pants sort of deal, as any parent knows, particularly after an adult child says that his most searing memory consists of an offhand comment in the car on the way to second grade that the parent cannot even dimly recall.

The truth about your own life is not always easy to accept, and sometimes hasn't even occurred to you.

London has the trick of making its past, its long indelible past, always a part of its present. And for that reason it will always have meaning for the future, because of all it can teach about disaster, survival, and redemption. It is all there in the streets. It is all there in the books.

All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.