The culture used to move relatively slowly, so you could take aim. Now it moves so fast, and is so fluffy and meaningless, you feel like an idiot even complaining about it.
Part of me has certainly been motivated by wanting to take a stand against the restrictions that made Mother give up so much.
I think a reason that a lot of people feel politically paralysed is that it used to be clear how power was organised. But those who have their hands on the levers of popular culture today have great power - and it isn't even clear who they are.
Divorced men are more likely to meet their car payments than their child support obligations.
A lot of people seem to want to make the institution of marriage substitute for a real relationship.
Feminism's agenda is basic: It asks that women not be forced to choose between public justice and private happiness.
As it turns out, social scientists have established only one fact about single women's mental health: employment improves it.
Each mind is pressed, and open every ear, to hear new tidings, though they no way joy us.
We are perverse creatures and never satisfied.
The hardest of all is learning to be a well of affection, and not a fountain; to show them we love them not when we feel like it, but when they do.
When you travel, remember that a foreign country is not designed to make you comfortable. It is designed to make its own people comfortable.
When you re-read a classic you do not see in the book more than you did before. You see more in you than there was before.
To take wine into our mouths is to savor a droplet of the river of human history.
To feel at home, stay at home.
The adjective is the banana peel of the parts of speech.
My son is 7 years old. I am 54. It has taken me a great many years to reach that age. I am more respected in the community, I am stronger, I am more intelligent and I think I am better than he is. I don't want to be a pal, I want to be a father.
He has made a profession out of a business and an art out of a profession.
For most men life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Cheese - milk's leap toward immortality.
One measure of friendship consists not in the number of things friends can discuss, but in the number of things they need no longer mention.
A bottle of wine begs to be shared; I have never met a miserly wine lover.
A sense of humor is the ability to understand a joke - and that the joke is oneself.
When you read a classic, you do not see more in the book than you did before; you see more in you than there was before.
The German mind has a talent for making no mistakes but the very greatest.
My main recollection is of the work I had to do in order to eat.
Gertrude Stein was masterly in making nothing happen very slowly.
For most men, life is a search for the proper manila envelope in which to get themselves filed.
Experience teaches you that the man who looks you straight in the eye, particularly if he adds a firm handshake, is hiding something.
As between mileage and experience choose experience.
I tried to use the questions and answers as an armature on which to build a sculpture of genuine conversation.
