On television, journalists now routinely appear on talk-shows-with-an-attitude where they are encouraged to say what they think about something they may not have finished thinking about.

I don't know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability.

I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.

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

Maybe this year, we ought to walk through the rooms of our lives not looking for flaws, but looking for potential.

Every thing, even the so-called timesaving device and energy-efficient machine, comes these days with an elaborate set of instructions for its care and feeding. Buying a machine has become more and more like buying a pet. ... We are time-crunched. Not just by the number of things we have to do, but the number of things we have. In the late twentieth century, things have become our new dependents.

We owned what we learned back there; the experience and the growth are grafted into our lives.