Basically I wake up in the morning and I think everything's going to be great. I'm really kind of optimistic, and I look forward to a new day. I pick up 'The New York Times,' and I look at the front page and realize that once again I'm wrong. I start to fixate on stuff.

Everybody's always asking me about my blood pressure. They did an interview once where they hooked me up to a blood pressure machine and they'd rile me. I'd yell and scream, and then it would just go back to normal in a few minutes. Everything else is probably rotting, but the blood pressure is spectacular.

Democrats are like a big tortoise that's on its back and can't get up; you can't make jokes about that.

The whole Valentine's thing is fine, but you don't back it up right next to the biggest gift-giving holiday of the year. Unbelievable. And we find it acceptable.

Hilary Putnam died of cancer at the age of 89. Those of us who had the good fortune to know Putnam as mentees, colleagues, and friends remember his life with profound gratitude and love, since Hilary was not only a great philosopher, but also a human being of extraordinary generosity, who really wanted people to be themselves, not his acolytes.

Marriage is an exercise in torture.

I have always stood up to protect women's access to safe and legal abortion, birth control and health care at Planned Parenthood.

Time and health are two precious assets that we don't recognize and appreciate until they have been depleted.