Her searches after knowledge were arbitrary and without context. It was as if she were shining a small flashlight of curiosity into the dark room of the world.

My father was the Jewish half of the family, yet it was my mother who taught me to have pride in that tradition.

When the gender role starts to descend, boys get into the masculine box.

Empathy is the most radical of human emotions.

Think about the pressure to "pass" by lying about one's agethat familiar temptation to falsify a condition of one's birth oridentity and pretend to be part of a more favored group. Fair-skinned blacks invented "passing" as a term, Jews escaping anti-Semitism perfected the art, and the sexual closet continues the punishment, but pretending to be a younger age is probably the most encouraged form of "passing," with the least organized support for "coming out" as one's true generational self.

Once we give up searching for approval we often find it easier to earn respect.

I guess 35 years ago, I thought we had more of a democracy than we actually do. Majority support doesn't help unless the majority is active and votes - but the opposition minority votes a much greater proportion, so we often lose by a narrow margin.