Goals too clearly defined can become blinkers.

Of any stopping place in life, it is good to ask whether it will be a good place from which to go on as well as a good place to remain.

The capacity to combine commitment with skepticism is essential to democracy.

Sharing is sometimes more demanding than giving.

I think you can totally be a totally normal kid from the suburbs of Chicago and go off and play shows. It's one of those things that when you go home, you're still the nerd you were when you left, and your parents still get to yell at you about cleaning up your room, and your girlfriend still drags you to the pet store.

It's hard to separate your remembered childhood and its emotional legacy from the childhoods that are being lived out in your house, by your children. If you're lucky, your kids will help you make that distinction.

The public schools in our neighborhood were so bad that the teachers in the school said you shouldn't send your kids here. My mother called around and found a school that was willing to give both me and my brother scholarship money. It's a classic story about black parents wanting more for their kids than they had for themselves.

The family court is extremely child focussed. Its overriding objective is to do what is in a child's best interests.