People generally overestimate how distinct their lives are, so the commonalities seemed to them like a series of miracles.

The teachers union may not like Betsy DeVos, but she's clearly within the range of Republican policy-makers.

For those of us who believe in it, there has to be a movement that says, "We still believe in trade. We still believe in international engagement for America. But for those losers or those who are suffering, we've got your back."

If you grow up in a home where actions don't lead to predictable consequences, you don't develop strategies to control your impulses.

Live life as a series of revelations

There certainly is a pattern of administrations that have good transitions, George W. Bush to Barack Obama, and administrations that have really bad transitions, I would say Dwight Eisenhower to John F. Kennedy. I would say this is beginning to look like a bad transition, from Barack Obama to Donald Trump as they begin to argue even at the presidential level, which is more or less unprecedented.

The message of the summoned life is that you don't need to panic if you don't yet know what you want to do with your life. But you probably want to throw yourselves into circumstances where the summons will come.