Change is legitimate and inevitable, for our language is a mighty river, picking up silt and flotsam here and discarding it there, but growing ever wider and richer.

Well, I had a small degree, that little infection of skepticism about America which resides in the minds of even America's closest friends. That America can't be quite as good as it says it is. And why does it need so relentlessly to keep saying how good it is?

Parents can plant magic in a child's mind through certain words spoken with some thrilling quality of voice, some uplift of the heart and spirit.

I grew up in kind of the last generation of Canadians who thought things that were happening in Britain were more important, almost, than what was happening in Canada. And my mother was fervently of that opinion.

I am not really retired, and may never be completely, but I can't think of a better place to contemplate retirement than New York City.

We spent a month in Japan last year, a week in Istanbul for the United Nations, and nearly three months in my native Nova Scotia, where my two brothers have homes; and we'll go back there this summer.

I never wanted to be a pundit.