It was one of those ridiculous arrangements that couples make when they are separating, but before they are divorced - when they still imagine that children and property can be shared with more magnanimity than recrimination.

Never confuse faith, or belief — of any kind — with something even remotely intellectual.

Don’t you understand?” he would say, “You imagine the story better than I remember it.

Every American should be forced to live outside the United States for a year or two. Americans should be forced to see how ridiculous they appear to the rest of the world! They should listen to someone else's version of themselves--to anyone else's version! Every country knows more about America than Americans know about themselves! And Americans know absolutely nothing about any other country!

I'm not at all contemporary, not even modern, and the fact that I would be so quaintly attracted to that wrestling rule makes me, I suppose, seem all the more old-fashioned. I believe in rules of behavior, and I'm quite interested in stories about the consequences of breaking those rules.

A truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy

Children are most impressed with the importance of a moment when they witness a parent breaking the parents' own rule.