The average parent may, for example, plant an artist or fertilize a ballet dancer and end up with a certified public accountant. We cannot train children along chicken wire to make them grow in the right direction. Tying them to stakes is frowned upon, even in Massachusetts.

I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future.

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

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

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

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

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.