For the several thousands of years before they became firefighters and physicians, women were sirens, enchantresses, snares. At times it seems as if female powerlessness is male self-preservation in disguise. And for millennia, this has made for a zero-sum game: A woman's intelligence was a man's deception.

Have you ever been married? Had that thing of someone calling you by a name not your own? It's unsettling. It's like a fictitious person.

Certainly, I am writing as a 21st-century woman, so I am much more inclined to view her as a three-dimensional woman. I think we keep coming up with this stubborn problem of a woman being judged by her appearance rather than her accomplishments. We are much more inclined to ask: was Cleopatra beautiful?

No biographical subject is ever on hold with the orthodontist. If there's a dry spell, it's your job to curtail or eliminate it.

I find just in terms of free time I'm always envious of people I know who... listen to music, watch films, play games, read books. I have to pick. And I find frequently that if I've got Sophie's Choice, I'll try to keep up with music and keep up with films. So my book reading and comic reading and game playing is terrible and infrequent.

I've never argued that humans are massively hot-wired. What I was trying to point out was that you can't understand how we learn unless you identify the learning mechanisms. And these have some genetic basis.

An art project, a hands-on science experiment, or a special field trip can transcend textbooks and flash cards. No one knows this better than those teaching students with autism.

I taught high school English for 24 years. I always teach my students to appreciate the beauty of language and to write poetically.