Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined.

Today, much of journalism and politics are in a kind of collusion to oversimplify and personalize issues. No room for ambivalence. Plenty of room for the personal attack.

Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers.

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.

This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.

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

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.