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.

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

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

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

Age is an accumulation of life and loss. Adulthood is a series of lines crossed.

I vote because it's what small-d democracy is about. Because there are places where people fight for generations and stand for hours to cast a ballot knowing what we ought to remember: that it makes a difference. Not always a big difference. Not always an immediate difference. But a difference.

Our 'mistakes' become our crucial parts, sometimes our best parts, of the lives we have made.