When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need.

What advertisers call brand loyalty is merely the consumer's defense against the need to waste energy differentiating among things that barely differ.

Normal is getting dressed in clothes that you buy for work, driving through traffic in a car that you are still paying for, in order to get to a job that you need so you can pay for the clothes, car and the house that you leave empty all day in order to afford to live in it.

We each have a litany of holiday rituals and everyday habits that we hold on to, and we often greet radical innovation with the enthusiasm of a baby meeting a new sitter. We defend against it and - not always, but often enough - reject it. Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to.

Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable.

Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today.

You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever.