I'm very optimistic. I think if you would describe me, my pretty consistent affect is that I'm a pretty happy person.

Being a reporter is as much a diagnosis as a job description.

People always blame the girl; she should have said no. A monosyllable, but conventional wisdom has always been that boys can't manage it.

It's what the Taliban does in Afghanistan, it's what gets done in the Middle East, and it's clearly something that certain mainly conservative groups in the United States would like to do. They miss the good old days, when men were men and women were nothing.

the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.

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

The unemployment rate among the young in the United States is still very disconcerting, although we all know it's nowhere near as bad as it is in some of the European countries, where in some places it approaches 50 percent.