Quotes from Nancy Gibbs

Anyone with the right mix of parental paranoia and entrepreneurial moxie can make a fortune by selling parents the equipment we think will keep us one step ahead of our kids.

Even if it wasn't always morning in America during the years of his presidency, Reagan's eagerness to insist that it was tapped into a longing among voters. They didn't want to picture themselves turning down their thermostats and buttoning up their cardigans. They wanted to strut again. Reagan opened his arms and said, 'Walk this way.'

Sure, we want to know what a president believes in... but that doesn't always mean he should tell us.

People don't blame the act of driving for auto accidents.

You can't hold up a blog; you can hold up a magazine.

Summer is not obligatory. We can start an infernally hard jigsaw puzzle in June with the knowledge that, if there are enough rainy days, we may just finish it by Labor Day, but if not, there's no harm, no penalty. We may have better things to do.

What is it about summer that makes children grow? We feed and water them more. They do get more sun, but that probably doesn't matter as much as the book they read or the rule they broke that taught them something they couldn't have learned any other way.

We are bombarded with reasons to stay inside: we're afraid of mosquitoes because of West Nile and grass because of pesticides and sun because of cancer and sunscreen because of vitamin-D deficiency.

Obama was elected on a slogan of hope and change because both were in short supply: the military exhausted by two wars, the banks failing their public trust, the U.S. Congress a comedy of dysfunction, and a federal government that seemed designed to idle on the sidelines.

The battles after the wars are over can be the toughest; there's no longer the public interest that accompanies, for good and for ill, the start of combat.

All wars, even the noblest, bring a reckoning of means and ends.

Girls grow up scarred by caution and enter adulthood eager to shake free of their parents' worst nightmares. They still know to be wary of strangers. What they don't know is whether they have more to fear from their friends.

When you are a media celebrity, every word you speak is dissected, as are those you choose not to speak.

Pour a liquid out of its container, and it changes shape, fills the space you give it. If you give children a lot of space, it may surprise you where they'll go and the shape they'll take.

You must get courageous men, men of strong views and let them debate and argue with each other.

Americas presidents tend to die young. Maybe it is in the nature of the men who reach such heights, or of the job once they attain it.

The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.

In many parts of the world, more people have access to a mobile device than to a toilet or running water.

Rooting from the sidelines is the most democratic of sporting rites: no skyboxes, no tickets required, just an unabashed will to holler and wave.

It's the experts in adolescent development who wax most emphatic about the value of family meals, for it's in the teenage years that this daily investment pays some of its biggest dividends.

It is faith that drives us to build, a belief that we cannot be limited by lack of nerve or airspace.

Calling Rand Paul 'the most interesting man in politics' is an invitation to an argument - but one we suspect he'd love to have.

The understanding of Syria's devastating civil war has been distorted by the immense danger and difficulty of covering it.

Back in the really olden days, dinner was seldom a ceremonial event for U.S. families. Only the very wealthy had a separate dining room. For most, meals were informal, a kind of rolling refueling; often only the men sat down.