"As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear."

"Habitual texters may not only cheat their existing relationships, they can also limit their ability to form future ones since they don't get to practice the art of interpreting nonverbal visual cues."

"We're learning how important it is both to preserve sibling relationships if they work and repair them if they're broken. We're also learning a lot about nonliteral siblings - stepsiblings, half-siblings - and the surprising power they can have."

"There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?"

"Put the uncommon effort into the common task... make it large by doing it in a great way."

"I have three goddaughters - I'm not sure why they trust me, because I have no experience with children - but I try."

"Fortitude is the quiet voice at eventide saying: I will try once more tomorrow. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue."

"It is a enduring truth that the distance between ambition and reality is bridged solely by consistent effort — an essential principle for the reflective life."