Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.

There's something undeniable about the posture of a person trying not to acknowledge your existance

The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you'd never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.

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

Athletes are American princes and the locker room is their castle. Some of them behave in princely fashion, become legitimate heroes to us all. And some are jerks.

I like to say that my mother had a very ordinary life. From the outside it didn't look like there was anything particularly special or wonderful about it, but when you watch somebody hold on to that life with both hands, it makes you think that life must be pretty damn good.

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.