At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.
I think it's a pity that in many people's minds constitutional reform and PR have come to mean much the same thing.
Something is happening to Britain and the British. Or has happened. We are said to be passing through a transition, or a turning point, or a transformation; nobody is quite sure which.
If a believer demands that I, as a nonbeliever, observe his taboos in the public domain, he is not asking for my respect, but for my submission.
Downplaying their faults is pretty much the point of campaigns. But we do count on them living with the constant terror of public rejection.
The idea that 'if you don't like how things are going, you can just leave' is so ingrained in Texas, the secession movement is no surprise.
My own dream is that we discover that the NSA has been secretly keeping files on members of the National Rifle Association.
Well, it'd certainly be fascinating if we discovered that gays were better at being married than heterosexuals are. Talk about irony.
When people say this isn't the America they grew up in, they're right. Nobody gets to grow old in the America they grew up in.
This is the moment when I should also admit that when the Internet first arrived I kept telling people it was a fad.
Memory is often - perhaps usually - a distorting lens: what we think we remember isn't the way it was at all. It's what we'd like to remember.
Branding experts believe that just because they have rethought a company's image or name, the rest of us will automatically fall in line.
I really don't despise anyone. But there is a list of a half dozen people I would prefer never to hear from or see again.
I don't think you can be a credible, modern candidate for president without making the environment a major part of your platform.
There's probably a half-dozen movie actors I really like. But a lot of them just aren't that interesting.
In less than a year, the Bush administration will strut out of office, leaving the country in roughly the same condition a toddler leaves a diaper.
I'm that grumpy old guy yelling at all those pesky little Grizzly Bear fans to get offa my lawn.
I come from an immigrant culture. I'm only a couple of generations away from having been a servant girl myself.
My father was a writer; I've known a lot of children of writers - daughters and sons of writers, and it can be a hard way to grow up.
If you're a writer, you just keep following the path - keep going deeper and deeper into the things that interest you.
Divorce in a young-adult novel means what being orphaned meant in a fairy tale: vulnerability, danger, unwanted independence.
