we have made an extraordinary transition. From moral absolutes to moral relativism. ... Moral problems become medical ones and yesterday's sinners become today's patients.

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

Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.

Who's counting? It was, of course, the minority who were counting. It always is. Most of the women I know today would dearly like to use their fingers and toes for some activity more enthralling than counting. They have been counting for so long. But the peculiar problem of the new math is that every time we stop adding, somebody starts subtracting. At the very least (the advanced students will understand this) the rate of increase slows. ... The minority members of any group or profession have two answers: They can keep score or they can lose.

I suppose we make kids the repository of our highest ideals because children are powerless. In that way we can have ideals and ignore them at the same time.

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.

I think most of us become self-critical as soon as we become self-conscious.