Much of what we called "depression" was really dissatisfaction, a result of setting a bar impossibly high or expecting treasures we weren't willing to work for.

My own father didn't talk a lot about feelings or emotions.

I still think there is a way to take all the mistakes that we've made as adults and put a little bit of a salve on them, a little bit of a fix on them, if we just are a little smarter in what we teach our kids.

At that moment i felt lonelier than i'd ever felt before, and that loneliness seemed to squat in my lungs and crush all but my most minimal breathing. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything.

Things that happen before you are born still affect you and people who come before your time affect you as well.

You're not going to get to college - you're not even going to be qualified, even to go to a community college, if you don't address the basic problem of literacy in America. And there's no reason - no reason - for us to have that problem.

Parents rarely let go of their children, so children let go of them. They move on. They move away.