What kind of bank gives back 65 percent-often less-of what you deposit? Indeed, when you compare the services of a bank and an insurance company, common sense suggests something is out of whack.

The larger the deductible you choose, the less insurance you are buying. Insurers want to sell insurance.

Hay fever suffers tend to be above average in intelligence.

In short: Readily available low-cost life insurance would be a threat to the industry, and whatever threatens the life insurance industry threatens America.

Nobody wants campaign finance reform more than me. It would save me a fortune.

Not surprisingly, the insurance lobby recoils in horror at the prospect of automatic coverage (including, when it was first proposed, Social Security), no matter how efficient it may be. Automatic coverage eliminates sales commissions and profit.

One of the advantages of the book’s having been out there for more than a quarter century is that there’s been time for people to report back on what it’s done for them.

Life insurance in America has traditionally been dominated by mutual insurers. Twelve of the fifteen largest life insurers are mutuals.

I was a writer for ‘New York’ magazine. I had been to business school, but what did I know? Still, everybody from the receptionists on up to the editor would ask me what they should do with their money.

The life insurance industry is filled with good people who believe in their work and their companies, but who may never have challenged the assumptions underlying their efforts.

I think a lot of people would rather have more control over their life than less.

Summers are the best. And I figured summer was my best time for meeting someone, too, because in the summer people are looking for someone to snuggle up with for the winter. And because in the summer I could take off my shirt.