I realized that, while I would never be my mother nor have her life, the lesson she had left me was that it was possible to love and care for a man and still have at your core a strength so great that you never even needed to put it on display.

I was a kid who sometimes got in trouble because I couldn't keep my mouth shut, which turned out to be an advantage when I became an opinion columnist.

Life is made up of moments, small pieces of glittering mica in a long stretch of gray cement.

I got a fortune cookie that said, "To remember is to understand." I have never forgotten it. A good judge remembers what it was like to be a lawyer. A good editor remembers being a writer. A good parent remembers what it was like to be a child.

There is a little boy inside the man who is my brother... Oh, how I hated that little boy. And how I love him too.

Maybe I had three children in the first place so I wouldn't ever have to play board games. In my religion, martyrs die.

Look at the view and you'll never be disappointed.