The urge to transform one's appearance, to dance outdoors, to mock the powerful and embrace perfect strangers is not easy to suppress." --Barbara Ehrenreich, Dancing in the Streets, 260.

Hope is essential to any political struggle for radical change when the overall social climate promotes disillusionment and despair.

For anyone worn down, The Impossible Will Take a Little While is a bracing double cappuccino.

Considering the absence of legal coercion, the surprising thing is that men have for so long, and, on the whole, so reliably, adhered to what we might call the breadwinner ethic.

Exercise is the yuppie version of bulimia.

No matter that patriotism is too often the refuge of scoundrels. Dissent, rebellion, and all-around hell-raising remain the true duty of patriots.

The 'working poor,' as they are approvingly termed, are in fact the major philanthropists of our society.

There is a vast difference between positive thinking and existential courage.

No one should be incarcerated for debt or squeezed for money they have no chance of getting their hands on.

Poverty is not a character failing or a lack of motivation. Poverty is a shortage of money.

Personally, I can't see why it would be any less romantic to find a husband in a nice four-color catalogue than in the average downtown bar at happy hour.

That place is happy over which a holy man builds a house, with fire, cattle, wife, children and good followers

There are countless opportunities to comfort others, not only in the loss of a loved one, but also in the daily distress that so often creeps into our lives.

May heaven protect us, cher monsieur, from being set on a pedestal by our friends!!!

I'm only interested in poetry.

I do know that, you know, Donald Trump has a global portfolio, and many global investors are in Russia.

We had a branding problem. We have allowed ourselves to be branded by our tragedies. If you said 'Oklahoma City,' chances are the next word out of your mouth was 'bombing.'

[On the music of Richard Strauss:] Too many notes!

Never use two words when one will do.

The people of Asia were slaves, because they had not learned how to pronounce the word 'no'.