Nancy Gibbs

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.

Decision making in a democracy depends above all on knowledge and not just the intel available to presidents and policymakers.

I've always found that once you're in the door of a place and you have the chance to show how you operate and how talented you are, then anything can happen.

A typical smart phone has more computing power than Apollo 11 when it landed a man on the moon.

Making distinctions is part of learning. So is making mistakes.

After 9/11, whatever the evidence of intelligence failures, many people still saw that attack as almost unimaginable, so brutal and brazen an assault.

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.'

The leading cause of death for girls 15 to 19 worldwide is not accident or violence or disease; it is complications from pregnancy. Girls under 15 are up to five times as likely to die while having children than are women in their 20s, and their babies are more likely to die as well.

'Sesame Street's' genius lies in finding gentle ways to talk about hard things - death, divorce, danger - in terms that children understand and accept.

Barack Obama wants teacher service scholarships.

The crossroads of science and politics is a dodgy place.

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.

Most of us were probably less than immaculately honest as teenagers; it's practically encoded into adolescence that you savor your secrets, dress in disguise, carve out some space for experiments and accidents and all the combustible lab work of becoming who you are.

On the court, Jason Collins is not a huge basketball star, but he has already claimed his place in civil rights history as the first openly gay athlete to play in one of the four major U.S. sports leagues.

A good president needs a big comfort zone. He should be able to treat enemies as opportunities, appear authentic in joy and grief, stay cool under the hot lights.

Modesty means admitting the possibility of error, subsuming the self for the good of the whole, remaining open to surprise and the gifts that only failure can bring. There are many ways to practice it. Try taking up golf. Or making your own bagels. Or raising a teenager.

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.

For the truly faithful no miracle is necessary. For those who doubt no miracle is sufficient.