Why do most Americans look up to education and down upon educated people?

Those who imagine that the world is against them have generally conspired to make it true.

Good teaching must be slow enough so that it is not confusing, and fast enough so that it is not boring.

People who think they're generous to a fault usually think that's their only fault.

Genealogy: A perverse preoccupation of those who seek to demonstrate that their forebears were better people than they are.

Between the semi-educated, who offer simplistic answers to complex questions, and the overeducated, who offer complicated answers to simple questions, it is a wonder that any questions get satisfactorily answered at all.

Norbert Blei is a writer the way people used to be troubadours and minstrels, celebrating what he has seen and heart and felt in a deceptively simple style reminiscent of the early Sherwood Anderson. . . . Like Anderson, he is a lover, and his affection invests his writing with a singular charm.