Nancy Gibbs

“In modern warfare, journalists are among the first responders, seeking out truth in the turmoil and wreckage, wherever it takes them.”

“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 fir...”

“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.”

“Family dinner in the Norman Rockwell mode had taken hold by the 1950s: Mom cooked, Dad carved, son cleared, daughter did the dishes.”

“There may be no less original idea than the notion that our hearts hold dominion over our heads.”

“Accidents at power plants are bad enough. But a leak from a bioreactor could be worse, since bacteria can learn new tricks when you're not looking.”

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

“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 Ob...”

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

“Americans sometimes ask what the government does and where their tax money goes. Among other things, it pays for all kinds of invisible but essential safety nets and life belts and guardrail...”

“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 experi...”

“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 hav...”

“Be bored and see where it takes you, because the imagination's dusty wilderness is worth crossing if you want to sculpt your soul.”

“In sub-Saharan Africa, fewer than 1 in 5 girls make it to secondary school.”

“Time dissolves in summer anyway: days are long, weekends longer. Hours get all thin and watery when you are lost in the book you'd never otherwise have time to read. Senses are sharper - som...”

“A runner's stride is not perfectly efficient.”

“Few Westerners know Iran as well as Robin Wright: her first trip there as a journalist was in 1973, and she has covered every important milestone since, from the Islamic revolution and the h...”

“Across much of the developing world, by the time she is 12, a girl is tending house, cooking, cleaning. She eats what's left after the men and boys have eaten; she is less likely to be vacci...”

“Death will never be pretty - its sights and smells too close and crude. And it will never come under our control: it gallops where we tiptoe, rips up our routines, burns our very breath with...”

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