Much is made of the accelerating brutality of young people's crimes, but rarely does our concern for dangerous children translateinto concern for children in danger. We fail to make the connection between the use of force on children themselves, and violent antisocial behavior, or the connection between watching father batter mother and the child deducing a link between violence and masculinity.

Friendships aren't perfect and yet they are very precious. For me, not expecting perfection all in one place was a great release.

I didn't anticipate the primal quality of my pleasure, the raw physicality of it, the way my whole body leaps forward when I see my grandsons after a few days' absence.

Other than life experience, nothing left a deeper imprint on my formative self than the movies.

To me, a person's identity is composed of both an 'I' and a 'we.' The 'I' finds itself in love, work, and pleasure, but it also locates itself within some meaningful group identity - a tribe, a community, a 'we.' America is too big and bland a tribe for most of us.

If the family were a fruit, it would be an orange, a circle of sections, held together but separable - each segment distinct.

A toy has no gender and no idea of whether a girl or boy is playing with it.