Clearly, freedom does not extend to the right to harm other people.

A manuscript under way always gave me something to do; only while enduring the aimlessness between books was I truly glum.

When we conceive of happiness as a static state, effectively a place toward which we are aimed but at which most of us will never feel we've quite arrived, then the vision becomes exclusionary.

In my country, we're sufficiently consumed by the concept of happiness that the right to its pursuit is enshrined in the Declaration of Independence. But what is happiness?

Set a good example as parents, since the most convincing argument that a girl can become a computer coder is that her mother is one.

The absence of doll babies in my toy chest didn't seriously influence my later decision not to become a mother; rather, I disdained Hasbro's Baby Alive wetting doll because I was already the kind of girl who would grow up to be childless by choice.

Beauty is aspirational - an ideal that mortals approach but seldom attain.

As individuals are best off believing they control their behaviour, the judiciary is best off imputing that control - barring powerful extenuating factors such as mental illness.

Conservative supporters might either have the courage of their convictions or, if truly ashamed, revise them, but they should at least refute the proposition that defending your own interests is only acceptable if you're broke.

Tory supporters are not spontaneously ashamed; they have been made to feel ashamed. British leftists fiercely believe they are right - in the sense of correct but also in the sense of just. Conservatives likewise believe they are right-as-in-correct. Yet Tories are less confident about whether their politics are right-as-in-just.