Our instinct as parents is to order our kids around — it's easier, and frankly, we're usually right. [But] reverse the waterfall as much as possible. Enlist the children in their own upbringing.

The key idea of agile is that teams essentially manage themselves. ... It works in software, and it turns out that it works with kids.

After a while, a surprising theme emerged. The single most important thing you can do for your family may be the simplest of all: Develop a strong family narrative.

Take a walk with a turtle. And behold the world in pause.

It's like they say in the Internet world — if you're doing the same thing today you were doing six months ago, you're doing the wrong thing. Parents can learn a lot from that.

Everybody has heard that family dinner is great for kids. But unfortunately, it doesn't work in many of our lives.

Tired of nagging your kids to hurry up, get dressed, drink their milk and brush their teeth? Here's a radical idea: Don't.

I'm a fifth generation Jew from the South, and I would say that I felt this connection to my religion, but it wasn't a spiritual connection.

But humans disappoint. Adam, in tasting the fruit, indicates that he prefers Eve to God, so God banishes them.

Here's a confession: I hate parenting books. I hate the ones that are earnest and repetitive.

I set out to write an anti-parenting parenting book.

A piece of advice his father had given him surfaced in Edgar's mind. Sometimes, he had said, it's better just to keep quiet and think with your heart.

Even great men bow before the Sun

The president of Mexico, or the ex-president, or whatever, whoever, who cares, he said, we will not even consider paying for the wall.

I'm not surprised if we begin to uncover the weapons program of Saddam Hussein - because he had a weapons program.

It is splendid to be a great writer, to put men into the frying pan of your words and make them pop like chestnuts.

Something to think about: If you fish the wrong fly long and hard enough, it will sooner or later become the right fly.

Maybe depression is the most reasonable response to all the crap around us. Maybe it's the happy people who need medication.

Looks are deceiving," Risa says. "After all, when I first saw you I thought you looked reasonably intelligent.

If you feel very deeply about something, it's not possible to sacrifice your integrity about that.

Do we change every time we have a new encounter? Are we endlessly mutable? I think these are fascinating questions: it's a rich vein to tap, and I don't think I have exhausted it fully yet.