We've lost that very simple transaction that's so pure, where a reader can say, "I support what you're doing, here's my dollar. I know that you guys are gonna be watchdogs or keep the government accountable, so here's my 50-cent contribution each day." It's just so tidy, and I think so inspiring.

A funny thing happened on the way to utopia: We've turned into this surveillance society and become a race of spies, where we track our kids and we track our spouses and we track our friends. I think very soon there will be an obsolescence of trust, because it's much easier to access a person's location than it is to ask - or to trust.

When anybody starts out with a memoir, you get the impulse to tell your own story with your own voice, and you get all that out in one fell swoop sometimes.

It's not that our family has no taste, it's just that our family's taste is inconsistent.

The only thing that everyone needs to look out for is keeping the students reading through high school and thereafter.

At that moment I was sure. That I belonged in my skin. That my organs were mine and my eyes were mine and my ears, which could only hear the silence of this night and my faint breathing, were mine, and I loved them and what they could do.

She pulls away, pats me on the shoulder with three mini-pats, like those used to pet reptiles.