"Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed."

"No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist?"

"Vaccines save lives fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing."

"When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble."

"Fortitude is the quiet voice at eventide saying: I will try once more tomorrow. In this truth lies the bedrock of all virtue — an essential principle for the reflective life."

"My favorite toy growing up was Polly Pocket. But one gift that I wanted though never received for Christmas was a pair of trampoline moon shoes. You strap them to your feet and they have springs on them, and you can just jump around!"

"Wisdom principle 75 tells us that the journey of life is lesson 69."

"So often is the virgin sheet of paper more real than what one has to say, and so often one regrets having marred it."