Madonna's great instinctive intelligence was evident to me from her earliest videos.

Jesus was a brilliant Jewish stand-up comedian, a phenomenal improviser. His parables are great one-liners.

Mental illness is no myth, as some have claimed. It is a disturbance in our sense of possession of a stable inner self that survives its personae.

Gay men may seek sex without emotion; lesbians often end up in emotion without sex.

What has been forgotten is that there were major intellectual breakthroughs in the 1960s, thanks to North American writers of an older generation. There was a rupture in continuity, since most young people influenced by those breakthroughs did not enter the professions.

Working moms commonly testify that they feel guilty when they are away from their children and guilty when they are not at their jobs. Devoted fathers certainly miss their children deeply, but it does not seem to be with the same gnawing, primal anxiety that often afflicts women.

Human life began in flight and fear. Religion rose from rituals of propitiation, spells to lull the punishing elements.