I myself am consummately middle class. We grew up in upper-middle-class suburbs in Oklahoma City, and thats very much the same ethos as what Richard Yates and John Cheever wrote about.

I'm not an academic; I'm just a bookish Joe who gets passionate about certain writers and suddenly wants to read everything they've ever written and find out why they wrote it.

I went down like a tray of dishes

Habitual excuses for inactivity indicates little or no interest in what one ought to have done.

The habit of being uniformly considerate toward others will bring increased happiness to you.

Economic progress, in capitalist society, means turmoil.

Kauai is kind of my place where I go to get centered. Its always my place to come back and feel normal again.

Three is the number of those who do holy work; Two is the number of those who do lover's work; One is the number of those who do perfect evil Or perfect good.

Unequal access to money and media plus bias, external and internalized, and male-dominant religions and illegality at the polls - all those are reasons for women's wildly unequal political power.

People can care about changing the world. But what gets them to act is pressure and social reward.

It well becomes a young man to be modest.

The life of a Christian is wondrously ruled in this world, by the consideration and meditation of the life of another world.

Mysteries are not to be solved. They eye goes blind when it only wants to see why.