If his mother was drowning and I was drowning and he had to choose one of us to save, He says he'd save me.

as we acquire new aches and new pains, our health care is, of necessity, being supplied by internists, cardiologists, dermatologists, podiatrists, urologists, periodontists, gynecologists and psychiatrists, from all of whom we want a second opinion. We want a second opinion that says, don't worry, you are going to live forever.

Living with golden fantasies of an endlessly nurtured infancy can be a neurotic refusal to grow up.

Suffering makes you deep. Travel makes you broad. In case I get my pick, I'd rather travel.

Control cannot be called conscience until we are able to take it inside us and make it our own, until--in spite of the fact that the wrongs we have done or imagined will never be punished or known--we nonetheless feel that the clutch in the stomach, that chill upon the soul, that self-inflicted misery called guilt.

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

Some days are like that. Even in Australia.