Ken Auletta:

When the mercurial Robert Maxwell closed the Daily News, Alan Rusbridger welcomed an offer from the Guardian to return to London as a feature writer. In 1992, the editor, Peter Preston, offered him the editorship of a weekend supplement. ... When Kurt Cobain died, the section ran an extensive account of his life and death. "All the graybeards came and said, 'Why are we doing this?' " he recalls. "I said, 'Our daughters are crying. That's why we're doing this.' "

Adam Grant:

Daughters apparently soften fathers and evoke more caretaking tendencies. The speculation is that as we brush our daughters' hair and take them to dance classes, we become gentler, more empathetic and more other-oriented.

Paul Ford:

One day I went to pick up my kids from day care and loaded them into their giant stroller, the size of a French car. Suddenly I looked at my daughter and was convinced that she was some other child. What if the day care had switched her with a similar-looking girl? What if I'd had some kind of stroke that kept me from recognizing my daughter? I couldn't sort it out, even as I walked home with full knowledge that I was both tired and crazy. She was too young to talk, so I couldn't ask her.

Benjamin J. Ames:

In the end, nothing competes with fireworks.