Quotes for All
I rewrite a great deal. I’m always fiddling, always changing something. I’ll write a few words – then I’ll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline. Ellen Goodman
I am a member of a small, nearly extinct minority group, a kind of urban lost tribe who insist, in the face of all evidence to the contrary, on the sanctity of being on time. Which is to say that we On-timers are compulsively, unfashionably prompt, that there are only handfuls of us in any … Read more
Alternative Lifestyles, the emotional fly-drive packages of our times, come equipped with a set of clothes, a choice of authors, a limited menu of sports and a discount coupon book of clichés. Ellen Goodman
The same people who tell us that smoking doesn’t cause cancer are now telling us that advertising cigarettes doesn’t cause smoking. Ellen Goodman
On television, journalists now routinely appear on talk-shows-with-an-attitude where they are encouraged to say what they think about something they may not have finished thinking about. Ellen Goodman
Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it’s our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may … Read more
I don’t know exactly why the notion of homeownership has such a grasp on the American imagination. Perhaps as descendants of landless immigrants we turn our plots into symbols of stability. Ellen Goodman
We each have a litany of holiday rituals and everyday habits that we hold on to, and we often greet radical innovation with the enthusiasm of a baby meeting a new sitter. We defend against it and – not always, but often enough – reject it. Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to. … Read more
How many of the people I know – sons and daughters – have intricate abstract expressionist paintings of their mothers, created out of their own emotions, attitudes, hands. And how many have only Polaroid pictures of their fathers. Ellen Goodman
It is not that fathers are better or worse, not that they are more loved or criticized, but rather that they are viewed with far less intensity. There is no Philip Roth or Woody Allen or Nancy Friday who writes about fathers with a runaway excess of humor, horror … feeling. Most of us let … Read more