I'm going to live long enough to live in an America that will assume universal health care is a basic right. That will be amusing and terrific.

You want to have fun with your kids, and no one has fun with someone who runs roughshod.

The problem... is emblematic of what hasn't changed during the equal opportunity revolution of the last 20 years. Doors opened; opportunities evolved. Law, institutions, corporations moved forward. But many minds did not.

New York is a city where it's particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.

I like to say that my mother had a very ordinary life. From the outside it didn't look like there was anything particularly special or wonderful about it, but when you watch somebody hold on to that life with both hands, it makes you think that life must be pretty damn good.

The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female.

Obama doesn't seem like a burger and a beer kind of guy. I have to say, I don't find that problematic at all.