I conveniently forgot to remember that people only have two hands, or, as another parent once said of having a third child, it's time for a zone defense instead of man-to-man.

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

There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.

I sometimes think that courage is the thing that you need more than any other thing. It's fear that cripples us. It's fear that accounts for racism, it's fear that accounts for sexism, for xenophobia.

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.

Americans like warm characters. It's why, no matter what he did in the early days, they kind of resonated to Bill Clinton because he seems like a guy that you could sit down and have a burger and a beer with. It's even why, despite the fact that he sometimes seemed to be not firing on all cylinders, lots of them still like George W. Bush - because he seemed like the kind of guy you could have a burger and a beer with.

part of the problem with a war on poverty today is that many Americans have decided that being poor is a character defect, not an economic condition.