the metabolism of a consumer society requires it continually to eat and excrete, every day throwing itself away in plastic bags.

The real trouble with the doctor image in America is that it has been grayed by the image of the doctor-as-businessman, the doctor-as-bureaucrat, the doctor-as-medical-robot, and the doctor-as-terrified-victim-of-malpractice-suits.

Ours is the first society in history in which parents expect to learn from their children, rather than the other way around. Such a topsy-turvy situation has come about at least in part because, unlike the rest of the world, we are an immigrant society, and for immigrants the only hope is in the kids.

The mark of a true crush... is that you fall in love first and grope for reasons afterward.

The sad truth is that excellence makes people nervous.

Californians tend to be outspoken. When the great migration began, the more timid people must have stayed home, and the bolder ones headed west.

Natural villains are hard to come by, what with all the shrinks and social-scientist types threatening to understand everybody into the ground.