I think Americans suspect, without even being able to articulate it, that we're at the end of the American century; that we're at the end of the 100 or 125 or 150 years when we were the undisputed arbiter and leader of the world.

The life of a good dog is like the life of a good person, only shorter and more compressed.

Well, I'd like to think I am, and I'd also like to think that we're all having a lot more fun getting older than we pretend. It was interesting to me when I first started working on this book that I'd mentioned that I was writing a memoir about aging and everybody would moan and groan and carry on.

I was very driven, very focused, very ambitious. I mean, when I look back on myself in my 20s, part of me just cringes.

Guilt is what separates humans from animals.

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.

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.