Friends broaden our horizons. They serve as new models with whom we can identify. They allow us to be ourselves-and accept us that way. They enhance our self-esteem because they think we're okay, because we matter to them. And because they matter to us-for various reasons, at various levels of intensity-they enrich the quality of our emotional life.

Mid-grade readers don't have short attention spans, they just have low boredom tolerance.

Our father presents an optional set of rhythms and responses for us to connect to. As a second home base, he makes it safer to roam. With him as an ally--a love--it is safer, too, to show that we're mad when we're mad at our mother. We can hate and not be abandoned, hate and still love.

A normal adolescent is so restless and twitchy and awkward that he can mange to injure his knee--not playing soccer, not playing football--but by falling off his chair in the middle of French class.

Our mother gives us our earliest lessons in love- and its partner, hate. Our father-our "second other"-elaborates on them.

If ambitious fantasies make people blush, and sexual fantasies make people blush and feel guilty, fantasies of violence and death may make people blush and feel guilty-and frightened too.

We will have to give up the hope that, if we try hard, we somehow will always do right by our children. The connection is imperfect. We will sometimes do wrong.