I could still remember how having a two day old baby makes you feel faintly sorry for everyone else, stuck in their wan unmiraculous lives.

Motherhood is like Albania- you can't trust the descriptions in the books, you have to go there.

Why are we, the most medicalized of societies, a culture in pain?

Housework hassles go on, are never resolved, and will probably extend into the afterlife ('Why am I the one who takes the clouds to the dry cleaners?').

This is a truism of child-raising, of course - whatever you give special time and attention to cooking, your children will despise and reject, with annoying gagging sounds.

Well, delusions are a wonderful thing, and they keep you company, too.

Hasn't anyone thought to look at outcomes as a logical way to figure out what really works? Not until recently. That tells you how far out of the picture the patient has been.

At a certain point, the soul exits from a cherished photograph, because we have come to the end of our loving projection into that moment.

The first axiom of the family vacation is that someone, possibly everyone, will get sick.

Like an animal, cancer sleeps, prowls, hibernates, turns surly or placid.

Home alone with a wakeful newborn, I could shower so quickly that the mirror didn't fog and the backs of my knees stayed dry. The one-minute hair conditioner was too slow for me.

I can't count the men who have tried to seduce me away from my virtue by teaching me how to defend it.

Had I known of the actual horrors of the German concentration camps, I could not have made The Great Dictator, I could not have made fun of the homicidal insanity of the Nazis.

Thought is a kind of opium; it can intoxicate us, while still broad awake; it can make transparent the mountains and everything that exists.

I try to record music that people can relate to.

Our government is a gift from God, who calls us to be good stewards of it.

It is the infinite alone that cannot be attained, for if it could it would become finite.

This morning my soul is greater than the world since it possesses You, You whom heaven and earth do not contain

My daughters are the heart of my heart and the center of my world

A good leader leads from the front. Don't get stuck in the office. Get out, meet people and listen to their stories.

There are two kinds of success-initial and ultimate.