Our pain hides beneath these fluttering, random thoughts that run through our heads in an endless loop. But there's so much freedom in getting to know what's under there, the bedrock.
Democracy may have arisen in the West as the way of striving for the universal aspiration to dignity and freedom, but it isn't alien to the underlying concepts that infuse religion and moral philosophy everywhere.
We are expected to believe that anyone who objects to the Department of Homeland Security or the USA Patriot Act is a terrorist, and that the only way to preserve our freedom is to hand it over to the government for safekeeping.
Freedom is a human concept. We have these very romanticized, sentimentalized notions of freedom. And for species - monkeys and other creatures - freedom is a pretty risky, complex proposition that's not always for their benefit.
For reasons I can't remember, my family eventually stopped attending church, and I started questioning the Catholic Church's beliefs. I dabbled a little, but nothing stuck.
I started doing some interviews with elderly people in the family because I knew they would pass away and we would lose the power of their story.
Personally, I think four is the perfect number of children for our particular family. Four is enough to create the frenzied cacophony that my husband and I find so joyful.
African-Americans know about racism, but I don't think we really know the causes. I decided it's first of all a family problem.
My mother, at least twice, cancelled our family's subscription to the newspaper I was working on, because she was so mad about its treatment of my father.
I was never conscious that I was becoming an icon or I'm not an icon, because my family, my kids, my husband keep me down-to-earth.
I see girls who are so skinny on the catwalks, and I know so many of them destroy their lives and their family's lives.
The most remarkable thing about my mother is that for thirty years she served the family nothing but leftovers. The original meal has never been found.
Both within the family and without, our sisters hold up our mirrors: our images of who we are and of who we can dare to be.
I am in awe of women who have full family lives and seem to work round the clock in the 24/7 news cycle.
The world's a small place and people are watching; and, you know, somebody disappears, the family knows and their colleagues know, and so eventually, these things do get out.
I hope my desire to travel so much isn't forever because it's not the most conducive lifestyle for a relationship or a family by any means.
I had my issues with the Kardashians, absolutely. I think there's so much wrong with how they are the most revered family in the country, but they are, nevertheless.
And since I just turned 32, I'm thinking about getting married, having a family, and that's very difficult to do on the road as a correspondent.
When I visited Vietnam for Oxfam, the thing that really struck me was how the local farmers had to prepare to evacuate or climb to their mezzanines with their valuable family possessions.
The notion that employees and companies have a social contract with each other that goes beyond a paycheck has largely vanished in United States business.
Companies buy customers when they cannot win new business on their own. They merge when their executives do not have a better idea of what to do.
