No sooner do we think we have assembled a comfortable life than we find a piece of ourselves that has no place to fit in.

By listening, by caring, by playing you back to yourself, friends ratify your better instincts and endorse your unique worth. Friends validate you.

children may need challenges and high-risk conditions in order to develop the self-generated immunity to trauma that characterizes survivors. To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.

It is Hillary's [Clinton] star power that radiates to every corner of the ballroom. New York bigwigs, such as financial-media impresario Michael Bloomberg, attorney and labor mediator Theodore Kheel, and District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, crane to see her.

In my memoir, I admit that I've been as fearful of success as of failure. In fact, when 'Passages' was published, I so dreaded bad reviews that I ran away to Italy with a girlfriend and our children to hide out.

There is no more defiant denial of one man's ability to possess one woman exclusively than the prostitute who refuses to redeemed.

If every day is an awakening, you will never grow old. You will just keep growing.