I'm always sad when Dad doesn't like my columns. He waits for them every week and usually likes them, in which case he doesn't say a word - it's only if he's critical that he bothers to call.

Somehow, the rare trips to Tel Aviv give me the feeling that I have a career.

What kind of people will these ghettos of Palestinians produce? What form of morality, national consciousness and hope will people be left with after so many years of stifling occupation and a sense of hopelessness?

How I'd like to start a new life in a distant land. Not because of racism or politics. But to be in a place that I knew hardly anything about, in a place where I wouldn't even care to know the prime minister's name. A place where names and faces would have no meaning for me.

My family had to flee Iran... the revolution, and we were very, very lucky to come to America and have opportunities presented to us. And that's... one of the things that makes America great.

I think if we are actually going to accept our generation's responsibility, that's going to mean that we give our children no less retirement security than we inherited from our parents.

I was always a neat kid. I never wanted my hands dirty. I wasn't a dirty kid. A lot of kids like to run around. If I was rolling around the dirt, I went home and took a shower. That's just the way I was. I'm not sure. I might have been born with it.

I kind of grew up with a mix of two things. One was kind of this individual work ethic that my father and my stepfather and my mother all taught me, which was never depend on anyone else to do things for you, and work really hard on your own. At the same time, I benefited from the help of church and family and government my whole life.