There is so much more information about the scientific world than there was a generation ago that we have all increased our opportunities for ignorance. There are more things not to know. ... The machinery that we deal with is so much more complex that it is possible to become dysfunctional at a much higher level of performance.

I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.

My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.

We continually want to unmask our heroes as if there were more to be learned from their nakedness than from their choice of clothing.

We may never know why Joe Ellis fabricated a heroic past. But we know that the life he embellished has deeply diminished the life he'd earned.

Parents remain our touchstones, fellow travelers, even after death. They are both missing and present.

What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.