When U.S.-based editors and columnists parachute into a news storm, it is often the stringers who keep us out of trouble, helping us glimpse the complexity behind the headlines.

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

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.

Adolescence, that swampy zone between safety and power, is best patrolled by adults armed with sense and mercy, not guns and a badge.

As long as people have been making little people, they've wanted to know how not to.

High school is a haunted house in April, when seniors act up because the end is near. Even those who hate school sometimes cling to the devil they know. And for the kids who love it, the goodbyes are hard to think about.

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.

The Reverend Jeremiah Wright would baptize Obama, perform his marriage to Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, baptize their daughters, and draw him into the raucous, restless family of faith that Obama had never known before.

Charlie Rangel was writing laws on our taxes as chair of the Ways and Means Committee while somehow neglecting to pay his own.

I don't think it's necessary to shout if you have a good story. But I also don't think you should shy away from being bold in the statement that you're making.

George W. Bush, though a president's son, is cast as Reagan's heir even more than his father's.

Our children will outwit us if they want; for when it comes to technology, they hold the higher ground. Unlike other tools passed carefully and ceremonially from one generation to the next - the sharp scissors, the car keys - this is one they understand better than we do.

Americans are grateful for the connection and convenience their phones provide, helping them search for a lower price, navigate a strange city, expand a customer base or track their health and finances, their family and friends.

The typical white American woman in 1800 gave birth seven times; by 1900, the average was down to 3.5.

Right now, doctors can test for about 2,500 medical conditions, but they only can treat about 500 of those. So what do you do with the knowledge about the others?

Runners exalt the marathon as a public test of private will, when months or years of solitary training, early mornings, lost weekends, rain and pain mature into triumph or surrender. That's one reason the race-day crowds matter, the friends who come to cheer and stomp and flap their signs and push the runners on.

I'm wondering how many elected figures any of us could find who do not, in the front or back of their minds, remember who does them favors, who doesn't.

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

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

We've seen what happens when it serves a president's interest to flaunt his faith - which is almost inevitably does, since every poll affirms that Americans want their leader to submit to some higher power.

Rarely has a new player on the world stage captured so much attention so quickly - young and old, faithful and cynical - as has Pope Francis.

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.

At times, it seems as if the only women effortlessly balancing their jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones on TV.

Presidents make their hard decisions and then abide forever with their mistakes and regrets.

America's 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.

As a candidate, Obama disdained the game of politics, a self-conscious contrast to all the tireless political athletes named Clinton.

The millennials were raised in a cocoon, their anxious parents afraid to let them go out in the park to play. So should we be surprised that they learned to leverage technology to build community, tweeting and texting and friending while their elders were still dialing long-distance?

We know what the birth of a revolution looks like: A student stands before a tank. A fruit seller sets himself on fire. A line of monks link arms in a human chain. Crowds surge, soldiers fire, gusts of rage pull down the monuments of tyrants, and maybe, sometimes, justice rises from the flames.

There's a smartphone gait: the slow sidewalk weave that comes from being lost in conversation rather than looking where you're going.

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.

Inflicting emotional distress has typically been treated as a civil action. How 'substantial' does the distress have to be for it to turn criminal?

The Catholic Church is one of the oldest, largest and richest institutions on earth, with a following 1.2 billion strong, and change does not come naturally.

I'm sentimental about many things: the lumpy feel of a baby's unused feet, the metallic smell of the air before the first snow, the last scene in 'It's a Wonderful Life.' But Valentine's Day leaves me cold.

It's no secret that the media has fragmented in recent years, that audiences have been cut into slivers, and that more and more people get their news from ever narrower outlets.

Sometimes justice is at its most merciful when it's blind.

When I was coming out of college, storytelling was very much something you did with pencil and paper, so the technological platform versatility, I think, is really valuable.

I live in a dumb house. Which is not to say that I don't love its quirky charm, its drafty windows and leaky fireplaces and an electrical system that protests when too many people are trying to vacuum and microwave at the same time. But charm is not always user-friendly.

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

I would like to see every newspaper and every magazine have a network of bureaus all over the world, gathering news.

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.

Twenty-first century war adds new risks: more and more often there are no front lines, no central command, no rules of engagement - only a chaotic collision of politics, power, faith and bloodlust. Victims are as likely to be civilians as soldiers.

We want laws to be applied predictably.

But we have to pass the bill so you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.

Don't underestimate your opponent, but don't overestimate them, either.

I really want women to know their power, to value their experience. To understand that nothing has been more wholesome in the political process than the increased involvement of women.

Every month that we do not have an economic recovery package 500 million Americans lose their jobs.

We have so much room for improvement. Every aspect of our lives must be subjected to an inventory... of how we are taking responsibility.

We in Congress stand by Israel. In Congress, we speak with one voice on the subject of Israel.

Democratic priorities remain clear: to provide a tax cut for working families, to promote policies that produce jobs and economic growth, and to assist millions of our fellow Americans who have lost their jobs through no fault of their own.

If I cry, it's about the personal loss of a friend or something like that. But when it comes to politics - no, I don't cry.