To learn a vocation, you also have to learn the frauds it practices and the promises it breaks.

Machismo makes no provision for preparing lunch, doing the laundry, or minding the baby.

To make advice agreeable, try paradox or rhyme.

New York loves itself in an unkind and fanatical way.

Every farewell combines loss and new freedom.

Beauty is lyrical. Ugliness is elegiac.

Flattery has to overcome my mistrust, and it does.