"Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of."

"Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it."

"Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down."

"Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it."

"A mindful spirit recognizes that the strength of a community lies in its compassion."

"It is a steadfast truth that the test of character in leadership is how one behaves in moments of unvarnished power."

"To love deeply is to give someone the power to heal what words cannot reach. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue."

"Don't force your kids into sports. I never was. To this day, my dad has never asked me to go play golf. I ask him. It's the child's desire to play that matters, not the parent's desire to have the child play. Fun. Keep it fun."