Southerners are so devoted to genealogy that we see a family tree under every bush.

True nostalgia is an ephemeral composition of disjointed memories.

Keep dating and you will become so sick, so badly crippled, so deformed, so emotionally warped and mentally defective that you will marry anybody.

When women talk about "privacy" they mean abortion rights, and the millions of words feminists have written about "a room of one'sown" refer to psychological space, rarely to physical solitude. For most women being alone is tantamount to being deserted.

American couples have gone to such lengths to avoid the interference of in-laws that they have to pay marriage counselors to interfere between them.

Each time a mediocre singer performs, he is saying, in effect, "This is good enough for you." The audience, thrust into that familiar American mood of knowing something is wrong but not knowing what it is, unconsciously absorbs the insult and projects it back onto the mediocre performer in the form of inattention, rudeness and noise.

Recently while browsing in a secondhand bookstore I bought a paperback copy of The Intellectual and the City, but I was unable to read it. When I got home I discovered that the original owner had highlighted the entire book - literally. Every line on every page had been drawn through with a bright green Magic Marker. It was a terrifying example of a mind that had lost all power of discrimination.