Predictions that unit cohesion could not survive honesty about sexual orientation were simply wrong. What does threaten morale arethe prolonged investigations, the questioning of friends and co-workers, the searches of barracks for magazines and letters, the witch hunts.

I think the last couple of years of life for many, many people are the same as they were 50, 60, 70 years ago. They could be really tough because of infirmity.

Hospitals are a little like the beach. The next wave comes in, and the footprints of your pain and suffering, your delivery and recovery, are obliterated.

That's what makes life so hard for women, that instead of thinking that this is the way things are, we always think it's the way we are.

Ideas are like pizza dough, made to be tossed around.

I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box.

[In the aftermath of death] Small talk feels too small, big talk too enormous.