All of the qualities that you need to be a good opinion columnist tend to be qualities that aren't valued in women.

It is hard to find someone who will give your children a feeling of security while it lasts and not wound them too much when it isfinished, who will treat those children as if they were her own, but knows--and never forgets--that they are yours.

Well, we tell our kids things like 'don't gossip' and then an hour later they hear us on the phone. Stuff like that.

How is it that, a full two centuries after Jane Austen finished her manuscript, we come to the world of Pride and Prejudice and find ourselves transcending customs, strictures, time, mores, to arrive at a place that educates, amuses, and enthralls us? It is a miracle. We read in bed because reading is halfway between life and dreaming, our own consciousness in someone else's mind.

If you raise an intelligent girl she will become a feminist because of the facts of her own life. Raising feminist boys is more difficult. Raising egalitarian boys. One of the reasons you have to raise them that way is because it's better for them.

Reading is another thing that has made me more human by exposing me to worlds I might never have entered and people I might never meet.

I remember adolescence, the years of having the impulse control of a mousetrap, of being as private as a safe-deposit box.