Today Washington is our Hollywood, the Senate our Warner Bros., the White House our Beverly Hills. People who never read a line of a movie magazine deal with the lives of leaders as if they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.

Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.

When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.

Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to.

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

Who's counting? It was, of course, the minority who were counting. It always is. Most of the women I know today would dearly like to use their fingers and toes for some activity more enthralling than counting. They have been counting for so long. But the peculiar problem of the new math is that every time we stop adding, somebody starts subtracting. At the very least (the advanced students will understand this) the rate of increase slows. ... The minority members of any group or profession have two answers: They can keep score or they can lose.