A book is more than the sum of its materials. It is an artifact of the human mind and hand.

I was a news reporter for 16 years, seven of them a foreign correspondent in the Middle East, Africa and the Balkans. Perhaps the most useful equipment I acquired in that time is a lack of preciousness about the act of writing. A reporter must write. There must be a story. The 'mot juste' unarriving? Tell that to your desk.

They say the Lord's Day is a day of rest, but those who preach this generally are not women.

I was not 15 anymore, and choices no longer had that same clear, bright edge to them.

To know a man's library is, in some measure, to know a man's mind.

Instead of idleness, vanity, or an intellect formed by the spoon-feeding of others, my girls have acquired energy, industry, and independence.

Who is the brave man--he who feels no fear? If so, then bravery is but a polite term for a mind devoid of rationality and imagination.