Nonfiction writers are the packhorses of literature. We're meant to carry the story. If we can make it up and down the mountain by a reliable if not scenic route, we have delivered. Technique is optional.
When you become part of something, in some way you count. It could be a march; it could be a rally, even a brief one. You're part of something, and you suddenly realize you count. To count is very important.
One thing, however, I know with certainty: violence, or the direct threat of violence, of the kind we have seen in the past few days, is totally unjustified as a response to any published word or image.
I have also been saddened, though hardly surprised, by the weakness of the EU's reaction to the criminal attack on the Danish embassy in Syria, which seems to have been permitted, if not actively encouraged, by the Syrian regime.
After saying yes to Turkey, the EU is having difficulty finding clear and consistent grounds for saying no to other, still more remote candidates - but being in the general vicinity of Europe does seem to be a continuing requirement.
Is Wall Street the rightful master of our economic fate? Or should we choose a broader form of sovereignty?
First get an absolute conquest over thyself, and then thou wilt easily govern thy wife.
Thou ought to be nice, even to superstition, in keeping thy promises, and therefore equally cautious in making them.
It would be suicide in the American academy to show too early an interest beyond your doctoral specialization: charges of everything from charlatanry to ambition would be levied and tenure denied. I've seen this first-hand.
What I am against is false optimism: the notion either that things have to go well, or else that they tend to, or else that the default condition of historical trajectories is characteristically beneficial in the long-run.
Read. Read all the time. Read as a matter of principle, as a matter of self-respect. Read as a nourishing staple of life.” (Wellesly High School commencement speech, “You Are Not Special”, 6-12)
Do we ever have to abandon all hope? Is it not perhaps a good thing that by refusing to give in to the evidence, the dreams that lie half awake in us all may persist?
I don't care whether you use natural gas, ethanol, the battery. You can use anything, just so it's American.
Natural gas is better distributed than any other fuel in the United States. It's down every street and up every alley. There's a pipeline.
Be strong within ones self, but never forget where ones true strength comes from.
My parents have sailed around the world; they know what can happen and that it's not always fun, but because I want to do it so much, they agreed and supported me.
One of the things that made me persist in the Antarctic in the face of sickening discouragements was my determination to name a portion of the earth's surface after my father.
We unwittingly judge products by their boxes, books by their covers, and even corporation's annual reports by their nice glossy finish.
An androgynous mind was not a male mind. It was a mind attuned to the full range of human experience, including the invisible lives of women.
If Rosa Parks had taken a poll before she sat down in the bus in Montgomery, she'd still be standing.
The Founding Fathers would be sorry to see that America had become so divided and factionalized.
