Though films become more daring sexually, they are probably less sexy than they ever were. There haven't been any convincing love scenes or romances in the movies in a while. (Nobody even seems to neck in theaters any more.) ... when the mechanics and sadism quotients go up, the movie love interest goes dead, and the film just lies there, giving a certain amount of offense.

The style of flirtation specific to classrooms was of service to the students all their lives.

The radical intelligence in the moderate position is the only place where the center holds. Or so it seems.

People have been modeling their lives after films for years, but the medium is somehow unsuited to moral lessons, cautionary tales or polemics of any kind.

A favorite strategy was the paragraph-terminating: Right? Followed immediately by Wrong. This linear invitation to a mugging was considered a strategy of wit.

It is always self-defeating to pretend to the style of a generation younger than your own; it simply erases your own experience in history.

I took a little celebrational nap.