All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.

I would even go to Washington, which is saying something for me, just to glimpse Jane Q. Public, being sworn in as the first female president of the United States, while her husband holds the Bible and wears a silly pill box hat and matching coat.

The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible; that is, that one is male and the other female.

The best thing about Sassy Seats is that grandmothers cannot figure out how they work and are in constant fear of the child's falling. This often makes them forget to comment on other aspects of the child's development, like why he is not yet talking or is still wearing diapers. Some grandmothers will spend an entire meal peering beneath the table and saying, "Is that thing steady?" rather than, "Have you had a doctor look at that left hand?

We are awash in the revealed world.

The misdeeds of ordinary men can be buried with them, and their lives described in half-truths that are really half-lies. But not a public man. Particularly not this one.

This is how I learn most of what I know about my children and their friends: by sitting in the driver's seat and keeping quiet.