While liberals had embraced Obama as someone who had left-wing progressive ideas, the truth is that by personality he's a very incremental guy.

God bless the physician who warms the speculum or holds your hand and looks into your eyes. Perhaps one subtext of the health caredebate is a yen to be treated like a whole person, not just an eye, an ear, a nose or a throat. A yen to be human again, on the part of patient and doctor alike.

Sometimes we don't see out of our peripheral vision what's coming right around the corner.

London opens to you like a novel itself. [...] It is divided into chapters, the chapters into scenes, the scenes into sentences; it opens to you like a series of rooms, door, passsage, door. Mayfair to Piccadilly to Soho to the Strand.

Real friends offer both hard truths and soft landings and realize that it's sometimes more important to be nice than to be honest.

When I write a novel, I have what I think of as an icon that helps get me into the world of the book.

Today is the only guarantee you get.