A child who has a grandparent has a softened view of life, the feeling that there is more to life than what we see, more than getting and gaining, winning and losing.

Grandchildren are the dots that connect the lines from generation to generation.

... in this impersonal world of the nine-digit zip code, credit cards, and numbered bank accounts, in this world of no marriage, late marriage, and remarriage, the operative word in office relationships is 'family.

Men are taught to apologize for their weaknesses, women for their strengths.

A letter is never ill-timed; it never interrupts. Instead it waits for us to find the opportune minute, the quiet moment to savor the message. There is an element of timelessness about letter writing.

Briefcases, like CEOs, should never look new and unused.

Grandmothers are to life what the Ph.D. is to education. There is nothing you can feel, taste, expect, predict, or want that the grandmothers in your family do not know about in detail.