The pursuit of otherness, the sense that we are somehow different than our brothers and sisters, no matter where we find them, allows for all the other great evils: racism, sexism, homophobia, violence against gay people and against women.

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

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

the joy of someone who had been a reader all her life, whose world had been immeasurably enlarged by the words of others.

The Cairo conferenceis about a complicated web of education and employment, consumption and poverty, development and health care. It is also about whether governments will follow where women have so clearly led them, toward safe, simple and reliable choices in family planning. While Cairo crackles with conflict, in the homes of the world the orthodoxies have been duly heard, and roundly ignored.

On the other hand, I think that Governor Romney has to worry that his turnout is going to be low, that he is not going to bring out the evangelicals, that he is not going to bring out the Tea Party stalwarts. If he does not, then it's pretty clear that he will lose the election. So I think turnout in key groups is going to be really, really key on Election Day.

Novels are usually built on conflict, sometimes very, very difficult conflict. It's why men write war novels - because there you go, there's the conflict writ large.