"The minute health care becomes a huge, unwieldy, expensive government bureaucracy it's a permanent feature of life and there's nothing anyone can do about it."

"We immigrants can sometimes sound a little hysterical about this because we come from places that have tried this and we know where it leads. Anybody who's lived in countries with socialized health care knows that it becomes the dominant political issue."

"The essence of a government health care system - for people who have never lived under it and don't know - is waiting, waiting, waiting. You wait for everything. You wait for years for operations that are routine in America."

"In my dreams, I could be a Princess, and that's what I was. Like most little girls, I believed nothing less than a Prince could make my dreams come true."

"Each morning my characters greet me with misty faces willing, though chilled, to muster for another day's progress through the dazzling quicksand the marsh of blank paper."

"It is a humble truth that wisdom is the quiet art of recognizing what can be changed and releasing what cannot — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"And I realized that there was no sports reporter, so I started covering sporting events."