Kids and violent TV, violent TV and violence, violence and kids. The only people missing from this discussion are the parents. Where are we? Gone. Abdicated.

For most of my adult life, I have been an emotional hit-and- run driver--that is, a reporter. I made people like me, trust me, open their hearts and their minds to me, and cry and bleed on to the pages of my neat little notebooks, and then I went back to a safe place and made a story out of it.

I think the gift of my mother's death, if anything so terrible can be said to have an upside to it, is that I was always keenly aware that life was fleeting, and that you'd better live while you have the chance. As I say in the book, since I was 19 years old I felt like I was living for two, and when I out-lived my mother, when I got into my forties, it felt like a miracle to me.

Look around at the azaleas making fuchsia star bursts in spring; look at a full moon hanging silver in a black sky on a cold night. And realize that life is glorious, and that you have no business taking it for granted.

Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.

I really feel like I'm a liberal because I'm a Catholic, because I took the words of the New Testament to heart.

Socialized medicine, some still cry, but it's long been socialized, with those covered paying for those who are underinsured. American medicine is simply socialized badly, penny wise and pound foolish.