Teens think listening to music helps them concentrate. It doesn't. It relieves them of the boredom that concentration on homework induces.

Common sense comes from experience, and kids need to fail as well as succeed in order to learn it. It's difficult to develop common sense when you spend a lot of time in your room where nothing much happens.

Be able to confide your innermost secrets to your mother and your innermost fears to your father.

It is a lot easier to prove that you don't love someone than it is to prove that you do, but one of the best 'proofs' I know is the desire to devote time to the person with no expectation of any sort of compensation, including gratitude, in return.

Suppose you're on a game show, and you're given the choice of three doors. Behind one door is a car, the others, goats. You pick a door, say #1, and the host, who knows what's behind the doors, opens another door, say #3, which has a goat. He says to you: 'Do you want to pick door #2?' Is it to your advantage to switch your choice of doors?

Skill is successfully walking a tightrope between the twin towers of New York's World Trade Center. Intelligence is not trying.

Be able to meet any deadline, even if your work is done less well than it would be if you had all the time you would have preferred.