Respect and fear are two different things.

As soon as you bring up money, I notice, conversation gets sociological, then political, then moral.

Your sons weren't made to like you. That's what grandchildren are for.

When people leave, they always seem to scoop themselves out of you.

Novelists of a conservative or more purely aesthetic bent hold up better on the surface, but their novels go in and out of fashion according to relevance or irrelevance.

Combined families often get bad reviews, but the family my children got when they traded away 'the suffocating four-person' nuclear one is one that has benefited all of them.

People are quite frequently eccentric.