Escapism sold books, to be sure, but not nearly as many as were sold by exposing America’s flaws and making the average American reader (and book club member) look closely at his or her most cherished social assumptions. Americans might not be eage...
There is one province in which, sooner or later, virtually everyone gets dealt a leading role--hero, heroine, or villain.... Unlike the slight implications of quotidian dilemmas that confront the average citizen in other areas of life ... the stakes ...
It's Simon. He's missing." "Ah," said Magnus, delicately, "missing what, exactly?" "Missing," Jace repeated, "as in gone, absent, notable for his lack of presence, disappeared." "Maybe he's gone and hidden under something," Magnus suggested. "It can'...
Friendship is just a made up word that we think means: I know you and trust you more than the average person I know. It really means: somewhere in the creation of our destinies we were meant to be the missing piece of each other with a bind unequaled...
still other winters average their rain months into a long, cold season of relentless sog and little color. At such times, looking out through the spattered glass, I feel, deep in some spongy, unignorable organ, that we will have floods, and damage, a...
It is a peculiarity of knitters that they chronically underestimate the amount of time it takes to knit something. Birthday on Saturday? No problem. Socks are small. Never mind that the average sock knit out of sock-weight yarn contains about 17,000 ...
Freedom is essentially a condition of inequality, not equality. It recognizes as a fact of nature the structural differences inherent in man — in temperament, character, and capacity — and it respects those differences. We are not alike and no la...
The best way to avoid abuses is for the populace in general to be scientifically literate, to understand the implications of such investigations. In exchange for freedom of inquiry, scientists are obliged to explain their work. If science is consider...
Would you believe I was in the neighborhood?” “No." “Well, how about that I needed to see you.” “Why? Did one of my neighbors call and say my cat’s been stalking their bunny?” One corner of his mouth went up. “You know, that sounds li...
It was four o'clock of a stickily wet Saturday. As long as it is anything from Monday to Friday the average library attendant goes around thanking her stars she isn't a school-teacher; but the last day of the week, when the rest of the world is havin...
I do not think men are good at all. I have seen enough to know that humans are a wicked race from their very birth. Selfishness defines us. Greed and lust motivate us. And even the best man who ever lived would lie to preserve his own life or beliefs...
Pre-forty, you can wash your face with Tide and use Vaseline for moisturizer, toss on a little mascara and lip gloss, and you're a friggin' cover girl. Those of us on the slippery slope that is the Other Side of Forty can testify-- those days are so ...
You haven't any right to expect your friends to be larger than yourself, larger than life. Just take them as they are, cut down to average size, and be glad you have them. To drink with, laugh with, borrow money from, lend money to, stay away from th...
Let me tell you-no, let me quietly explain to you: the percentage of this school is no higher than that at your present school; the only difference is that this group TRIES harder, therefore it achieves more. You, as most mortals in this world do, fa...
A survey of 348 male managers at twenty Fortune 500 companies found that fathers from dual-career families put in an average of two fewer hours per week – or about 4 percent less – than men whose wives were at home. That was the only difference b...
Your level of audacity affects how well they perceive your idea. Audacity in asking means that you ask for what you actually want. When you are in the heat of the conversation, and things are getting real, and the yes and no affects your bank acco...
The craft, trade, agriculture, science, a large part of the art - all this can only stand on a broad base , on a consolidated, strong and healthy mediocrity. Served in their services and the science of their work - and even the arts. We cannot wish f...
I had a dream about you. You made phone books for a living, and I filled up your pages by impregnating as many women as possible. You said I was a living saint, and I said I couldn’t argue with you there. It’s too bad I can’t get a tax write-of...
We must sober up and admit that too many of the Republicans and the Democrats have played us, lied to us and stolen from us, while the getaway car was driven by the media. A media that can no longer claim with a straight face the role of journalist. ...
The new mathematics is a sort of supplement to language, affording a means of thought about form and quantity and a means of expression,more exact,compact, and ready than ordinary language. The great body of physical science, a great deal of the esse...
Fran Kubelik: I never catch colds. C.C. Baxter: Really? I was reading some figures from the Sickness and Accident Claims Division. You know that the average New Yorker between the ages of twenty and fifty has two and a half colds a year? Fran Kubelik...
