The family is the basic cell of government: it is where we are trained to believe that we are human beings or that we are chattel, it is where we are trained to see the sex and race divisions and become callous to injustice even if it is done to ourselves, to accept as biological a full system of authoritarian government.

Happy or unhappy, families are all mysterious. We have only to imagine how differently we would be described - and will be, after our deaths - by each of the family members who believe they know us.

Some of us are becoming the men we wanted to marry.

There's no greater gift than thinking that you had some impact on the world, for the better.

I hope readers will consider, especially in this age of the World Wide Web, that as miraculous as it is, we still need to be in the same room with all five senses if we are to empathize with each other.

Labeling makes the invisible visible, but it's limiting. Categories are the enemy of connecting. Link, don't rank.

It is more rewarding to watch money change the world than watch it accumulate.