If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera.

A small wedding is not necessarily one to which very few people are invited. It is one to which the person you are addressing is not invited.

Yes, etiquette is hypocritical. Yes, it does inhibit children - if you're lucky. But the idea that it's elitist and irrelevant is like saying language is elitist and irrelevant.

Adorable children are considered to be the general property of the human race. Rude children belong to their mothers.

Email is very informal, a memo. But I find that not signing off or not having a salutation bothers me.

Honesty has come to mean the privilege of insulting you to your face without expecting redress.

People who put slipcovers, doilies, plastic protectors, and cellophane on everything good that they own rarely live to see an occasion so good that all these covers are removed.