We don't do ambivalence well in America. We do courage of our convictions. We do might makes right. Ambivalence is French. Certainty is American.

Hospitals are a little like the beach. The next wave comes in, and the footprints of your pain and suffering, your delivery and recovery, are obliterated.

I haven't seen so much tippy-toeing around since the last time I went to the ballet. When members of the arts community were askedthis week about one of their biggest benefactors, Philip Morris, and its requests that they lobby the New York City Council on the company's behalf, the pas de deux of self- justification was so painstakingly choreographed that it constituted a performance all by itself.

My father really, really pushed me to excel in a way that I resented for years and then realized had really worked for me.

I think there was a long period of time when we got real invested in a youth culture, and not coincidentally it was when the baby boomers, who let's face it, take up a lot of space on the planet, were young.

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

One of the interesting things I discovered, talking about your grandmother, is I did a search of my uses of the word "elderly" in my copy over the years, and you will not be surprised to hear that the older I got the less often I used the word elderly in print.