When men reach their sixties and retire, they go to pieces. Women go right on cooking.

Speed as a drug disorganizes the personality; speed as the goal of information dissemination commits a subtler crime. People are mainlining our words. We rarely read of the rational alternatives, only of the commands that all must change or else. This is a prescription for public panic.

To be tested is good. The challenged life may be the best therapist.

In the many times I have seen Hillary [Clinton] speak, she never fails to dazzle audiences by speaking in paragraphs, without notes.

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.

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

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.