“The two things I was positive about in life were that I was going to be a teacher at a boarding school or an operative with the CIA posted abroad. I could write a book about all the things I was su...”

“I was up late last night yapping about the elections on CNN and up early this morning doing the same thing in my daughter's kindergarten class.”

“Intelligence is not a moral category.”

“I have no way of knowing how people really feel, but the vast majority of those I meet couldn't be nicer. Every once in a while someone barks at me. My New Year's resolution is not to bark back.”

“The rapid growth of prenatal testing has had some undeniably positive effects: A woman who knows she will bear a child with a handicap can plan to deliver in a hospital equipped for risky births. A...”

“I'm so pathetically eager for people to love D.C. It's so sad. It's like I work for the chamber of commerce or something.”

“None of us can choose where we shall love...”

“There are so many men, all endlessly attempting to sweep me off my feet. And there is one of you, trying just the opposite. Making sure my feet are firm beneath me, lest I fall.”

“Whales feel cohesion, a sense of community, of loyalty. The distress call of a lone whale is enough to prompt its entire pod to rush to its side- a gesture that lands them nose to nose in the same ...”

“If it is stupid but it works, it isn't stupid. (a Shin'a'in saying)”

“I belong to a stupid nation that kill and murder their own people for language and religion, then they call it foreigners interference.”

“We still live with this unbelievable threat over our heads of nuclear war. I mean, are we stupid? Do we think that the nuclear threat has gone, that the nuclear destruction of the planet is not imm...”