I personally read criticism - at least by writers I enjoy - to stimulate a conversation in my own mind, and I like to think that's the function I serve for others.
Although the number of manufacturing jobs in the United States has stagnated, dropping 12 percent from a high in the early 1980s, the number of retail jobs has risen 43 percent.
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
I could be working 300 hours a week. I just say 'no.' The power of slow is the power of no. I can't go to every party I get invited to. I can't do every work thing.
There's one thing that I like about Rome that was stated by Napoleon: that from sublime to pathetic is only one step away. And in Rome there's a constant shifting between sublime and pathetic.
A cannonball travels only two thousand miles an hour; light travels two hundred thousand miles a second. Such is the superiority of Jesus Christ over Napoleon.
Almost all of us growing up have played baseball on some level. It has an inside track with people. It has a unifying effect.
Two hours on television just doesn't automatically happen. I'm up early, I'm reading newspapers online, talking to my staff, coming up with ideas.
Because I was once a reporter, I've always felt a sense of estrangement inside the newsroom. The field is alive and interactive, while the newsroom is quiet and stereotypical.
I discovered that, in order to write a magnificent piece, you should shoot the images because once you are filming, you are writing the script in your mind.
It isn't discomfort, or dis-ease as he put it. It's this aching, throbbing, god-awful incurable pain - and it's known as life. When will the doctors learn: It isn't death that's the disease.
Vigorous writing is concise. A sentence should contain no unnecessary words, a paragraph no unnecessary sentences, for the same reason that a drawing should have no unnecessary lines and a machine no unnecessary parts.
Not everybody has a talent for painting, or for the piano, or for dance. But we can write our way into the artist's head and into his problems and solutions. Or we can go there with another writer.
No one has something original or important to say will willing we run the risk of being misunderstood; people who write obscurely are either unskilled in writing or up to mischief
If a philosophical writer cannot be followed, the difficulty of his subject can be placed only in mitigation of his offense, not in condonation of it. There are too many expert witnesses on the other side.
Readers must be given room to bring their own emotions to a piece so crammed with emotional content; the writer must tenaciously resist explaining why the material is so moving.
I want to write more books, see my first novel made into a film, fight more campaigns, work in more countries. I want to be able to recall experiences that have endured for their pleasure and range and intensity.
And, of course, millions of us cross the border to work in US homes and gardens and factories and carpentry shops and restaurants, and if you go to a restaurant pretty much anywhere in the United States, the chances are that the dishes will be washed...
There have been two Geraldo Riveras through his long career. One of them was a reporter who has done some remarkable work. The other was a television show host who did what it took to get an audience.
At the White House, everybody works for the same person. They're all part of the same company. But on Capitol Hill, they're all independent contractors. They all work for themselves. That's a formula for getting news.
In large organizations there are discrete functions. I do this; you do that. I swim in my lane; you swim in your lane. That can be very effective for certain processes and in certain stable conditions. But it doesn't work in unstable conditions.
