If the family were a boat, it would be a canoe that makes no progress unless everyone paddles.

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.

Illness is the proving ground of friendship.

It's smart to be friends with one's sex partner but dumb to have sex with one's friends.

We need old friends to help us grow old and new friends to help us stay young.

It angers me that sick people have to wait for everything and everybody - doctors, nurses, callbacks, lab results, prescriptions, medications, technicians, treatment rooms. If illness is the embodiment of powerlessness, which, believe me, is true, then waiting is its temporal incarnation.

I feel about mothers the way I feel about dimples: because I do not have one myself, I notice everyone who does.