Eating should be an act of physical necessity or emotional joy, not something to alleviate boredom.

We paw at nostalgia even before we hit twenty, wanting a holiday that never happened, a wholesomeness that could not survive in the wild.

Students view any teacher who does not bury them under work as some sort of mentally impaired kitten to be kicked aside.

If you are old enough to feel angst about how a holiday “feels, ” you are very likely no longer in the target demographic.

My Christmas was a sum total of the ministrations of adults, usually adults who wanted me to encourage my parents to buy something for me to consume and discard.

Turn your head away from the screen, my friend. It will tell you nothing more.

If a woman were elected president, would our nation expect her husband to be the official White House host?

My sister and I truly are best friends.

I am in great terror of your understanding by which you penetrate into my world; and then I stand revealed and I have shared my kingdom with you.

Controlling complexity is the essence of computer programming.

Jean Valentine and Jane Cooper were my professors at Sarah Lawrence College - and they were uncompromised in their art. They gave me models of how to live one's life as a poet.

We have the most flexible and adaptive economy. Making sure we sustain the ability of the American economy to perform well is really the priority of economic policy.

My first priority is my children. If at any moment I put aside something that I want to do to be a better parent than that is more than okay for me.

There's only one thing on my mind. There's only one goal. One aim. One focus.

I seem to write an opera about every 20 years; if you live long enough you can write four operas. I finished my third in 1970.