I didn't go to school for a full year until I was 12. In the summer I was a wild child in the woods, with no shoes, and in the fall it was back to the city, shoe shops and school.

I suppose these deadlines we set for ourselves are really a way of saying we appreciate time, and want to use all of it.

The society in 'The Handmaid's Tale' is a throwback to the early Puritans whom I studied extensively at Harvard under Perry Miller, to whom the book is dedicated.

And yet it disturbs me to learn I have hurt someone unintentionally. I want all my hurts to be intentional.

The Eskimos had fifty-two names for snow because it was important to them: there ought to be as many for love.

I was horrified in high school by the fate of the hanged maids at the end of the Odyssey; it seemed unfair to me, even then.

The problem with meditating is I generally go to sleep, and that's because I'm doing it wrong.