I don't know if God exists and I don't care. God's will and design for this temporal and spatial vastness, if any, is so patently, deliberately impenetrable that I doubt any mortal has a grasp on it. The very inexplicability of sad events like the tsunami, like the AIDS crisis or even like the cancer death of the father of one of my daughter's 2nd-grade classmates last week are, to me, reminders to focus on our obligations to one another, not to the infinite; to honor the creator, if any, by honoring creation itself and hoping that's good enough.

Fear of failure is a ticket to mediocrity. If you’re not failing from time to time, you’re not pushing yourself. And if you’re not pushing yourself, you’re coasting.

I think it's weird that people think someone who's not a politician could be the mayor of Chicago.

Empathy is the greatest virtue. From it, all virtues flow. Without it, all virtues are an act.

You can't buy time or save it, common idioms notwithstanding. You can only spend it.

Making resolutions is a cleansing ritual of self-assessment and repentance that demands personal honesty and, ultimately, reinforces humility. Breaking them is part of the cycle.

This sense of the safe-deposit box as a totem of responsible security inspired me to rent a box myself shortly after the birth of our first child….