I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.

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

Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.

We spend January 1st walking through our lives, room by room, drawing up a list of work to be done, cracks to be patched. Maybe this year, to balance the list, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives...not looking for flaws, but for potential.

We owned what we learned back there; the experience and the growth are grafted into our lives.