A life of unremitting caution, without the carefree - or even, occasionally, the careless - may turn out to be half a life.

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.

Wow, so much of the way I've transacted my life... so much of the results that I'm happy about are because of what Daddy did.

I'm always keeping an eye on the court. Also, when the members of Congress came to his office during the budget debacle of a year and a half back and said, "We want to de-fund Planned Parenthood," he said, "Not going to happen." Those apparently were more or less his exact words.

I do think there's some aspect of being a novelist that is a little crazy making.

A friend and I flew south with our children. During the week we spent together I took off my shoes, let down my hair, took apart my psyche, cleaned the pieces, and put them together again in much improved condition. I feel like a car that's just had a tune-up. Only another woman could have acted as the mechanic.

Ethnic stereotypes are misshapen pearls, sometimes with a sandy grain of truth at their center. ... but they ignore complexity, change, and individuality.