Californians tend to be outspoken. When the great migration began, the more timid people must have stayed home, and the bolder ones headed west.

A handwritten, personal letter has become a genuine modern-day luxury, like a child's pony ride.

I reserve my greatest admiration for those who continue to struggle to embrace the whole impossible tangle of snakes that is our society; those who fight to identify and strengthen human connections, and defeat polarizing forces that strain to drive us apart.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Ours is the first society in history in which parents expect to learn from their children, rather than the other way around. Such a topsy-turvy situation has come about at least in part because, unlike the rest of the world, we are an immigrant society, and for immigrants the only hope is in the kids.

Rome's riches are in too immediate juxtaposition. Under the lid of awful August heat, one moves dizzily from church to palace to fountain to ruin, a single fly at a banquet, not knowing where to light.

Evolution is fascinating to watch. To me it is the most interesting when one can observe the evolution of a single man.