All reading is good reading. And all reading of Jane Austen and Charles Dickens is sublime reading.
All of life like a series of tableaux, and in the living we missed so much, hid so much, left so much undone and unsaid.
America is a country that seems forever to be toddler or teenager, at those two stages of human development characterized by conflict between autonomy and security.
I have a cat, the pet that ranks just above a throw pillow in terms of required responsibility.
There’s something undeniable about the posture of a person trying not to acknowledge your existance.
It’s only before realities set in that we can treasure our delusions.
Maybe crazy is just the word we use for feelings that will not be contained.
We’ve made hyper motherhood a measure of female success.
There is only room in the lifeboat of your life for one, and you always choose yourself, and turn your parents into whatever it takes to keep you afloat.
Here is the real domino theory – gay man to gay man, bisexual man to straight woman, addict mother to newborn baby, they all fall down and someday it will come to you.
The unemployment rate among the young in the United States is still very disconcerting, although we all know it’s nowhere near as bad as it is in some of the European countries, where in some places it approaches 50 percent.
The future is built on brains, not prom court, as most people can tell you after attending their high school reunion. But you’d never know it by talking to kids or listening to the messages they get from the culture and even from their schools.
If there is anyone who’s living the work of the New Testament, it’s the nuns of the Catholic church and not the Catholic hierarchy.
Decorating consists mostly of building enough bookshelves.
New York is a city where it’s particularly hard to be poor, not only because everything costs twice as much as it does elsewhere but because over-the-top affluence is part of its identity.
Women who marry early are often overly enamored of the kind of man who looks great in wedding pictures and passes the maid of honor his telephone number.
Ignorant free speech often works against the speaker. That is one of several reasons why it must be given rein instead of suppressed.
The victim mentality may be the last uncomplicated thing about life in America.
You just can’t tell or calibrate motive or intelligence or sense. So I don’t read anything unless someone tells me that it’s really smart or illuminating. I don’t read any reviews anymore and it’s been really liberating.
There is a lot of talk now about metal detectors and gun control. Both are good things. But they are no more a solution than forks and spoons are a solution to world hunger.