All my adult life I've felt drawn to ask long-married couples how they were able to stay together. All of them said the same thing: "We worked hard at it.

Luck is indeed where preparation meets opportunity.

Call home at least once a week. It's a proven fact that we call home less the older we get. And that's wrong. It should be the other way around. As we get older, our parents get older.

somehow, with the passage of time, and the dealines that life imposes, surrending became the right thing to do

I was hugely impressed... was the ultimate example of a man who knew what he didn't know, was perfectly willing to admit it, and didn't want to leave until he understood. That's heroic to me. I wish every grad student had that attitude.

The most difficult part of writing a book is not devising a plot which will captivate the reader. It's not developing characters the reader will have strong feelings for or against. It is not finding a setting which will take the reader to a place he or she as never been. It is not the research, whether in fiction or non-fiction. The most difficult task facing a writer is to find the voice in which to tell the story.

A coach yells at the kid he thinks can improve but the coach will not yell at the kid who he/she knows won't.