The family wage has been eroded by the same developments that have promoted consumerism as a way of life.

Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.

We do not need to minimize the poverty of the ghetto or the suffering inflicted by whites on blacks in order to see that the increasingly dangerous and unpredictable conditions of middle-class life have given rise to similar strategies for survival. Indeed the attraction of black culture for disaffected whites suggests that black culture now speaks to a general condition.

The work of art is a scream of freedom.

A growing awareness of the depth of popular attachment to the family has led some liberals to concede that family is not just a buzzword for reaction.

Conservatives unwittingly side with the social forces that contribute to the destruction of traditional values.

I despise the cowardly clinging to life, purely for the sake of life, that seems so deeply ingrained in the American temperament.