People come here penniless but not cultureless. They bring us gifts. We can synthesize the best of our traditions with the best of theirs. We can teach and learn from each other to produce a better America.

The fullness of life comes from an identity built on giving and on joy.

Traditionally parents have wondered what their teens were doing, but now teens are much more likely to be doing things that can get them killed.

With meditation I found a ledge above the waterfall of my thoughts.

Language imparts identity, meaning, and perspective to our human condition. Writers are either polluters or part of the cleanup.

Teenage girls are extremists who see the world in black-and- white terms, missing shades of gray. Life is either marvelous or notworth living. School is either pure torment or is going fantastically. Other people are either great or horrible, and they themselves are wonderful or pathetic failures. One day a girl will refer to herself as "the goddess of social life" and the next day she'll regret that she's the "ultimate in nerdosity.

Girls have long been evaluated on the basis of appearance and caught in myriad double binds: achieve, but not too much, be polite,but be yourself, be feminine and adult; be aware of our cultural heritage, but don't comment on the sexism. . . . Girls are trained to be less than who they really are. They are trained to be what the culture wants of its young women, not what they themselves want to become.