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.

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

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

It is not that fathers are better or worse, not that they are more loved or criticized, but rather that they are viewed with far less intensity. There is no Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Nancy Friday who writes about fathers with a runaway excess of humor, horror ... feeling. Most of us let our fathers off the hook.

In today's amphetamine world of news junkies, speed trumps thoughtfulness too often.

She goes in with a prejudice and comes out with a statistic.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.