When liberals finally grasped the strength of popular feeling about the family, they cried to appropriate the rhetoric and symbolism of family values for their own purposes.

Today Americans are overcome not by the sense of endless possibility but by the banality of the social order they have erected against it.

Relentless improvement of the product and upgrading of consumer tastes are the heart of mass merchandising.

It is advertising and the logic of consumerism that governs the depiction of reality in the mass media.

The family is a haven in a heartless world.

Nothing succeeds like the appearance of success.

The attempt to redefine the family as a purely voluntary arrangement grows out of the modern delusion that people can keep all their options open all the time.

Progressive rhetoric has the effect of concealing social crisis and moral breakdown by presenting them as the birth pangs of a new order.

George Orwell's contention was that it is a sure sign of trouble when things can no longer be called by their right names and described in plain, forthright speech.

The effect of the mass media is not to elicit belief but to maintain the apparatus of addiction.

It is the logic of consumerism that undermines the values of loyalty and permanence and promotes a different set of values that is destructive of family life.

If you don't trust a novelist, who are you going to trust?

The Medical Society of Sedgwick County, the Kansas Hospital Association and doctors have really done some remarkable work on wellness-related issues.

Nowadays I get complaints about long drum solos, but in those days they wanted me to keep on going so they could go over to the bar and have a drink.

As for what's the most challenging aspect of teaching, it's convincing younger writers of the importance of reading widely and passionately.

Boom and bust is a term that applied to the Conservative years and two of the worst recessions in history.

I don’t want to be a product of my environment. I want my environment to be a product of me.

Reducing military presence has never in history won a war.

When we finished the tour we had been writing together for a year. We moved forward from there and have just now finished our record. We're having a new record out in the Spring.

You have to be open to everything.

I appreciate men like Ben Webster and Coleman Hawkins very much.