I adore the work of Stephen Sondheim. I like musicales in general. They make surprisingly great running tapes.

It must be nice to be so strong and to think it's because you're so good, that you live right and eat right, so you deserve your health and happiness. But there is such a thing as luck, and there's more bad luck than good in this world.

Whatever you want, at any moment, someone else is getting it. Whatever you have, someone else is longing for.

Children can be happy when their parents are miserable. But a parent is never happier than her unhappiest child.

stinginess seemed instinctive to him. Darwinian even. He hadn't gotten to his current size by sharing.

I had ancestors who were slave-holders, which is a difficult piece of family history to say the least. In a recent New York Times article on the subject of modern attitudes toward our slave-holding past, the writer noted that we all want to be from "innocent origins." I _know_ I'm not. Then again, I suspect most of us are not.

It's very different to have this kid that I'm truly responsible for.