Not that happiness is dull. Only that it doesn't tell well. And of our consuming diversions as we age is to recite, not only to others but to ourselves, our own story.

The Web, the great time-killer that had replaced conspicuously passive television with its seductive illusion of productivity.

Children live in the same world we do. To kid ourselves that we can shelter them from it isn't just naive it's a vanity.

History is made of empires, and the United States was by far and away the greatest, richest, and fairest empire that had every dominated the earth. Inevitably, it would fall. Empires always did. But we were lucky, you said. We got to participate in the most fascinating social experiment ever attempted.

Got nothing to do with trying. You like someone, or you don't. If you're 'trying', you don't.

It was important to me to put together a future history that would scan, and serve as the backdrop to the domestic story. Economics is really what drives the plot.

I am vain, or once was, and one of my vanities was to feign that I was not.