The Statue of Liberty is meant to be shorthand for a country so unlike its parts that a trip from California to Indiana should require a passport.

There are obvious places in which government can narrow the chasm between haves and have-nots. One is the public schools, which have been seen as the great leveler, the authentic melting pot. That, today, is nonsense. In his scathing study of the nation's public school system entitled "Savage Inequalities," Jonathan Kozol made manifest the truth: that we have a system that discriminates against the poor in everything from class size to curriculum.

This is why I had children: to offer them a perfect dream of childhood that can fill their souls as they grow older.

I hadn't written a love story before and I hadn't written a novel with a happy ending before.

the most sacred business of judges is not to ratify the will of the majority but to protect the minority from its tyranny.

There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.

When hot dogs like Mr. D'Amato or the Republican apologist Roger Ailes say that Whitewater is worse than Watergate, it's because they're suffering from a disease. It's called bull-imia, and it's the regurgitation of patent hyperbole.