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That Is Supposed To Be The Rallying Cry Of Women In The Age Of Aids: No Condom, No Sex. But The Dirty Little Secret Is That The Rallying Cry Is A Whisper.... The Great Unspoken On The Heterosexual Aids Front Has Been How Behavior Is Still Determined By The Old Psychosexual Minuet Of The Sexes, The Lack Of Responsibility In Young Men And Of Assertiveness In Young Women.

-Anna Quindlen

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That Is Supposed To

Anna Quindlen

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That Is Supposed To Be The Rallying Cry Of Women In The Age Of Aids: No Condom, No Sex. But The Dirty Little Secret Is That The Rallying Cry Is A Whisper.... The Great Unspoken On The Heterosexual Aids Front Has Been How Behavior Is Still Determined By The Old Psychosexual Minuet Of The Sexes, The Lack Of Responsibility In Young Men And Of Assertiveness In Young Women.

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I Think That We Really Fool Ourselves About Our Ability To Be Safe And Secure Nowadays.

I Think At Every Moment In The Last Probably 100 Years, When The Institutional Church Had The Opportunity To Do The Right Thing, They Did The Wrong Thing. They're A Dying Institution In Many Parts Of The World Because They Refuse To Ordain Women Or Married People. And Now They're A Dying Institution Because Some Of Their Members Did Enormous Harm To Young People And Instead Of Responding Aggressively With Humility, And With Love, And With The Confession Of Wrongdoing, They Tried To Spin It As Though They Were A Political Party, And That's Just Deplorable.

If Men Got Pregnant, There Would Be Safe, Reliable Methods Of Birth Control. They'd Be Cheap, Too.

What Had I Expected Of The First Child? Everything. Rocket Scientist. Neurosurgeon. Designated Hitter. We Talked Wisely At Cocktail Parties About The Sad Mistake Our Mothers Had Made In Pinning All Their Hopes And Dreams On Us. We Were Full Of It.

Reporters Are Not Paid To Operate In Retrospect. Because When News Begins To Solidify Into Current Events And Finally Harden Intohistory, It Is The Stories We Didn't Write, The Questions We Didn't Ask That Prove Far, Far More Damaging Than The Ones We Did.

Downtime Is Where We Become Ourselves, Looking Into The Middle Distance, Kicking At The Curb, Lying On The Grass Or Sitting On The Stoop And Staring At The Tedious Blue Of The Summer Sky. I Don't Believe You Can Write Poetry, Or Compose Music, Or Become An Actor Without Downtime, And Plenty Of It, A Hiatus That Passes For Boredom But Is Really The Quiet Moving Of The Wheels Inside That Fuel Creativity.

It Is Hard To Find Someone Who Will Give Your Children A Feeling Of Security While It Lasts And Not Wound Them Too Much When It Isfinished, Who Will Treat Those Children As If They Were Her Own, But Knows--and Never Forgets--that They Are Yours.

Writing Seems To Be The Only Profession People Imagine You Can Do By Thinking About Doing It.

You Realize That Especially When You're Writing A Book Like This, Looking Back On Your Life, That There's Just Such A Depth Of Understanding You Acquire Over Time With The Help Of The People Who Love You That That's When You Can Really Get Down To What You Really Think And Believe.

The Joy Of Someone Who Had Been A Reader All Her Life, Whose World Had Been Immeasurably Enlarged By The Words Of Others.

Uncontrollable Consumerism Has Become A Watchword Of Our Culture Despite Regular And Compelling Calls For Its End. The United States Has More Malls Than High Schools; Americans Spend More Time Shopping Than Reading. ... Some Of The Most Insightful Writing About The American Character Over The Nation's History Has Been About Neither Freedom Nor Democracy But About The Crazed Impulse To Acquire Things.

I Think There Was A Long Period Of Time When We Got Real Invested In A Youth Culture, And Not Coincidentally It Was When The Baby Boomers, Who Let's Face It, Take Up A Lot Of Space On The Planet, Were Young.

I Believe That In A Contest Between The Living And The Almost Living, The Latter Must, If Necessary, Give Way To The Will Of The Former.

I Think What Saved Me, As A Writer, Is That There Are Really Two Breaking Points In My Life. One Was When I Was 19 And My Mother Died, And One Was When I Was 31 And My First Child Was Born. And That Sort Of Gave Me A Kind Of Rebirth That I Think Has Been Invaluable To Me As A Novelist, In Terms Of Seeing The World Anew.

Consider The Lilies Of The Field. Look At The Fuzz On A Baby's Ear. Read In The Backyard With The Sun On Your Face. Learn To Be Happy. And Think Of Life As A Terminal Illness Because If You Do You Will Live It With Joy And Passion, As It Ought To Be Lived.

Young Men Kill Someone For A Handful Of Coins, Then Are Remorseless, Even Casual: Hey, Man, Things Happen. And Their Parents Nab The Culprit: It Was The City, The Cops, The System, The Crowd, The Music. Anyone But Him. Anyone But Me.

Trying To Be Perfect May Be Inevitable For People Who Are Smart And Ambitious And Interested In The World And Its Good Opinion...what Is Really Hard, And Really Amazing, Is Giving Up On Being Perfect And Beginning The Work Of Becoming Yourself.

As I Said, I Had This Fabulous College Education. At College I Met The Man To Whom I've Been Married For 34 Years And Who Is The Father Of Those Three Kids. I Seriously Considered Going To Another College, And My Life Would Have Been Completely Different In Every Way.

Recently A Young Mother Asked For Advice. What, She Wanted To Know, Was She To Do With A 7-year-old Who Was Obstreperous, Outspoken, And Inconveniently Willful? "keep Her," I Replied.... The Suffragettes Refused To Be Polite In Demanding What They Wanted Or Grateful For Getting What They Deserved. Works For Me.

I'll Tell You The Truth - I Went To A Women's College, Barnard, The Most Selective College For Women In America Today. If There's One Thing I Came Out Of Barnard With, Because It Was A Women's College And A Great Institution Of Higher Education, It Was Fearlessness.

One Of The Interesting Things I Discovered, Talking About Your Grandmother, Is I Did A Search Of My Uses Of The Word "elderly" In My Copy Over The Years, And You Will Not Be Surprised To Hear That The Older I Got The Less Often I Used The Word Elderly In Print.

And Yet We Constantly Reclaim Some Part Of That Primal Spontaneity Through The Youngest Among Us, Not Only Through Their Sorrow And Anger But Simply Through Everyday Discoveries, Life Unwrapped. To See A Child Touch The Piano Keys For The First Time, To Watch A Small Body Slice Through The Surface Of The Water In A Clean Dive, Is To Experience The Shock, Not Of The New, But Of The Familiar Revisited As Though It Were Strange And Wonderful.

When Hot Dogs Like Mr. D'amato Or The Republican Apologist Roger Ailes Say That Whitewater Is Worse Than Watergate, It's Because They're Suffering From A Disease. It's Called Bull-imia, And It's The Regurgitation Of Patent Hyperbole.

The Gender Gap Looks At This Point Like It's Going To Favor The President, Particularly Among White Suburban Women. I Certainly Think It's Going To Be An Issue. But I Think The Single Most Important Thing In This Election Will Be Turnout.

One Of The Things That Got Me On This Topic For This Book Was That When I Was Researching The Column I Wrote In 2009 Saying That I Was Stepping Down From My Column At "newsweek" Because I Wanted To Make Room For Newer, Fresh Voices Out There, I Discovered That In The Year I Was Born, 1952, The Average Life Expectancy Of An American Was 68. I Was Shocked By That Figure And Every Time I Mention It I Hear A Gasp From Somebody In The Crowd. Now, Of Course, We're More Or Less At 80, So That Means That We've Gotten 12 Additional Years.

So I Do Think Sometimes The Political Mechanism Is Completely Disconnected From The People. However, What I Will Say Is That History Tells Us That Whenever Things Start To Move Too Fast, Whenever Progress Makes People Feel A Little Breathless, One Of The Go-to Spots That Government, That The Ruling Powers That Society Goes To Is To Try To Repress Women.

I Do Tend To Be Almost Kind Of Pollyanna-ish Person.

I Do Get A Sense That There's A Huge Disconnect Between The Political Powers And What's Really Happening, So Right-wing Conservatives Can Talk About Contraception All They Want, But The Women Of America Are Using Birth Control. It's As Simple As That.

The Difference Between Government And Leadership Is That Leadership Has A Soul.

I Don't Understand How People Learn To Live In The World If They Haven't Had Siblings. Everything I Learned About Negotiation, Territoriality, Coexistence, Dislike, Inbred Differences And Love Despite Knowledge I Learned From My Four Younger Siblings.

I Think I'm Like Most Novelists In That My Books Have Gotten Farther And Farther Away From Autobiography The Longer I've Been Writing Them.

I Was Doing The Family Grocery Shopping Accompanied By Two Children, An Event I Hope To See Included In The Olympics In The Near Future.

I Can't Think Of Anything To Write About Except Families. They Are A Metaphor For Every Other Part Of Society.

I Like To Say That My Mother Had A Very Ordinary Life. From The Outside It Didn't Look Like There Was Anything Particularly Special Or Wonderful About It, But When You Watch Somebody Hold On To That Life With Both Hands, It Makes You Think That Life Must Be Pretty Damn Good.

I Don't Know What I Would Do In The World Without [female Friends] For Advice, For Comfort, For Simply Knowing That There Is Someone Out There Who Knows Me As I Am, And Loves Me Despite And Because Of It.

It's Only Before Realities Set In That We Can Treasure Our Delusions.

I Learned To Live Many Years Ago. Something Really, Really Bad Happened To Me, Something That Changed My Life In Ways That, If I Had My Druthers, It Would Never Have Been Changed At All. What I Learned From It Is That Today Seems To Be The Hardest Lesson Of All. I Learned To Love The Journey, Not The Destination. I Learned That It Is Not A Dress Rehearsal, And That Today Is The Only Guarantee You Get. I Learned To Look At All The Good In The World And To Try To Give Some Of It Back Because I Believed In It Completely And Utterly.

There Is Little Premium In Poetry In A World That Thinks Of Pound And Whitman As A Weight And A Sampler, Not An Ezra, A Walt, A Thing Of Beauty, A Joy Forever.

London Has The Trick Of Making Its Past, Its Long Indelible Past, Always A Part Of Its Present. And For That Reason It Will Always Have Meaning For The Future, Because Of All It Can Teach About Disaster, Survival, And Redemption. It Is All There In The Streets. It Is All There In The Books.

The Future Is Built On Brains, Not Prom Court, As Most People Can Tell You After Attending Their High School Reunion. But You'd Never Know It By Talking To Kids Or Listening To The Messages They Get From The Culture And Even From Their Schools.

All Parents Should Be Aware That When They Mock Or Curse Gay People, They May Be Mocking Or Cursing Their Own Child.

At The Same Time That You've Got To Open Yourself Up To The Fact That Experience Is Going To Teach You Year After Year, Decade After Decade. I Remember I Very Badly Wanted To Write A Newspaper Column When I Was Only 21 Years Old, And I Went To My Editor And Told Him That, And He Said, "you're A Really Good Writer, But You Haven't Lived Long Enough To Be Qualified To Live Out Loud."

Catastrophe Is Numerical. Loss Is Singular, One Beloved At A Time.

People Who Are Knowledgeable About Poetry Sometimes Discuss It In That Knowing, Rather Hateful Way In Which Oenophiles Talk About Wine: Robust, Delicate, Muscular. This Has Nothing To Do With How Most Of Us Experience It, The Heart Coming Around The Corner And Unexpectedly Running Into The Mind. Of All The Words That Have Stuck To The Ribs Of My Soul, Poetry Has Been The Most Filling.

Women Are The Glue That Holds Our Day-to-day World Together.

There's Something Undeniable About The Posture Of A Person Trying Not To Acknowledge Your Existance

I Can't Begin To Predict How News Will Be Delivered To Readers In, Say, 100 Years. But I Do Know One Thing That Hasn't Changed: Whatever The Delivery System, Whether It's A Magazine, Book Or Blog, People Like Vivid Writing, Strong Stories And Credible People. So While The Venue Is Changing Rapidly, Human Nature Isn't, Which I Find Soothing.

I Sort Of Feel Like It Comes Around Again. That When You Get To A Certain Age, When You've Lived Enough And You've Got Your Friends To Support You And Your Family To Support You, You Wake Up One Morning And Think, Yeah, I'm Okay.

People Always Blame The Girl; She Should Have Said No. A Monosyllable, But Conventional Wisdom Has Always Been That Boys Can't Manage It.

I'm Going To Live Long Enough To Live In An America That Will Assume Universal Health Care Is A Basic Right. That Will Be Amusing And Terrific.

Having Children Can Smooth The Relationship, Too. Mother And Daughter Are Now Equals. That Is Hard To Imagine, Even Harder To Accept, For Among Other Things, It Means Realizing That Your Own Mother Felt This Way, Too--unsure Of Herself, Weak In The Knees, Terrified About What In The World To Do With You. It Means Accepting That She Was Tired, Inept, Sometimes Stupid; That She, Too, Sat In The Dark At 2:00 A.m. With A Child Shrieking Across The Hall And No Clue To The Child's Trouble.

I Conveniently Forgot To Remember That People Only Have Two Hands, Or, As Another Parent Once Said Of Having A Third Child, It's Time For A Zone Defense Instead Of Man-to-man.

Americans Like Warm Characters. It's Why, No Matter What He Did In The Early Days, They Kind Of Resonated To Bill Clinton Because He Seems Like A Guy That You Could Sit Down And Have A Burger And A Beer With. It's Even Why, Despite The Fact That He Sometimes Seemed To Be Not Firing On All Cylinders, Lots Of Them Still Like George W. Bush - Because He Seemed Like The Kind Of Guy You Could Have A Burger And A Beer With.

It Is Difficult For Me To Imagine The Same Dedication To Women's Rights On The Part Of The Kind Of Man Who Lives In Partnership With Someone He Likes And Respects, And The Kind Of Man Who Considers Breast-augmentation Surgery Self-improvement.

Reading Is Not Simply An Intellectual Pursuit But An Emotional And Spiritual One. It Lights The Candle In The Hurricane Lamp Of Self; That's Why It Survives

Well, I'd Like To Think I Am, And I'd Also Like To Think That We're All Having A Lot More Fun Getting Older Than We Pretend. It Was Interesting To Me When I First Started Working On This Book That I'd Mentioned That I Was Writing A Memoir About Aging And Everybody Would Moan And Groan And Carry On.

This Is Why I Had Children: To Offer Them A Perfect Dream Of Childhood That Can Fill Their Souls As They Grow Older.

I Never Think About Issues When I'm Working On A Novel. Issues Are Things That Happen To People In Sufficient Numbers To Elicit Widespread Attention; In Other Words, They're Just Life Happening. That's What I Think About: Life, And Telling A Story.

The Victim Mentality May Be The Last Uncomplicated Thing About Life In America.

I've Been A Feminist Since I Was A Teenager, But Originally It Was Because I Wanted To Make The World A Better Place For Me.

I Do A Lot Of Mental Work Before I Ever Start Writing.

Somewhere Between A Third And A Quarter Of All People Living In America Today Were Born Between 1946 And 1965 And If You Think You're Tired Of Hearing About Us, You Should Try Being One Of Us.

The Separation Of Church And State Grew Out Of A Desire, Not So Much To Protect Government From Religion, But To Protect Religion From Government.

A Friend And I Flew South With Our Children. During The Week We Spent Together I Took Off My Shoes, Let Down My Hair, Took Apart My Psyche, Cleaned The Pieces, And Put Them Together Again In Much Improved Condition. I Feel Like A Car That's Just Had A Tune-up. Only Another Woman Could Have Acted As The Mechanic.

Familiarity Breeds Content.

Look At The View And You'll Never Be Disappointed.

The Dark Aftermath Of The Frontier, Of The Vast Promise Of Possibility This Country First Offered, Is An Inflated Sense Of American Entitlement Today. We Want What We Want, And We Want It Now. Easy Credit. Fast Food. A Straight Shot Down The Interstate From Point A To Point B. The Endless Highway Is Crowded With The Kinds Of Cars Large Enough To Take A Mountain Pass In High Snow. Instead They Are Used To Take Children From Soccer Practice To Pizza Hut. In The Process They Burn Fuel Like There's No Tomorrow. Tomorrow's Coming.

The Church Does An Enormous Amount Of Good, And It Carries One Of The Most Valuable Messages Imaginable - That You Should Love Your Neighbor As Yourself, And That If You Have Two Coats You Should Give One To The Man Who Has None.

Obama Doesn't Seem Like A Burger And A Beer Kind Of Guy. I Have To Say, I Don't Find That Problematic At All.

I Love Having A President Who I Think Is Smarter Than I Am.

Raising Children Is A Spur-of-the-moment, Seat-of-the-pants Sort Of Deal, As Any Parent Knows, Particularly After An Adult Child Says That His Most Searing Memory Consists Of An Offhand Comment In The Car On The Way To Second Grade That The Parent Cannot Even Dimly Recall.

Here Is The Real Domino Theory - Gay Man To Gay Man, Bisexual Man To Straight Woman, Addict Mother To Newborn Baby, They All Fall Down And Someday It Will Come To You.

Socialized Medicine, Some Still Cry, But It's Long Been Socialized, With Those Covered Paying For Those Who Are Underinsured. American Medicine Is Simply Socialized Badly, Penny Wise And Pound Foolish.

We've Made Hyper Motherhood A Measure Of Female Success.

The More Humdrum Aspects Of Life Do Not Make For Gripping Reading. To Render Them Compelling, A Writer Must Describe The Universal In Eloquent And Evocative Prose. Alas, Frey's Writing Suggests That This Was Not An Option, And He Came Up With Something Else.

But It's Important, While We Are Supporting Lessons In Respecting Others, To Remember That Many Of Our Youngest Kids Need To Learn To Respect Themselves. You Learn Your Worth From The Way You Are Treated.

Amid Attempts To Protect Elephants From Ivory Poachers And Dolphins From Tuna Nets, The Rights Of Children Go Remarkably Unremarked.

Guilt Is What Separates Humans From Animals.

A Week In The Hospital She Had Told Us. A Hysterectomy, She Had Said. It Had Seemed Unremarkable To Me In A Woman Of Forty-six Long Finished With Childbearing, Although Every Day That I Grow Older I Realize There Is Never Anything Unremarkable About Losing Any Part Of What Makes You Female - A Breast, A Womb, A Child, A Man.

When You Look At The Women That Have Made A Real Difference In The World Throughout History, What They’ve Done Has Almost Always Been Defined By Fearlessness. That’s Something I Came To At A Certain Point; I Wish I’d Come To It Younger. Stop Looking Over Your Shoulder — There’s Nobody Who Matters Back There.

Even As We Enumerate Their Shortcomings, The Rigor Of Raising Children Ourselves Makes Clear To Us Our Mothers' Incredible Strength. We Fear Both. If They Are Not Strong, Who Will Protect Us? If They Are Not Imperfect, How Can We Equal Them?

The Cairo Conferenceis About A Complicated Web Of Education And Employment, Consumption And Poverty, Development And Health Care. It Is Also About Whether Governments Will Follow Where Women Have So Clearly Led Them, Toward Safe, Simple And Reliable Choices In Family Planning. While Cairo Crackles With Conflict, In The Homes Of The World The Orthodoxies Have Been Duly Heard, And Roundly Ignored.

What Usually Happens Is That When I'm Nearing The End Of One Novel A Vague Idea About What I Want To Do Next Begins To Present Itself To Me In Terms Of Theme. And I Would Say Over About The Next Six To Eight Months, Usually As I'm Out Power Walking In The Morning, Or When I'm Cooking At Night, Or When I'm Driving In The Car, The People Who Might Embody Those Themes Take On A Sharper And Sharper Focus. And There Comes This Sort Of Critical Mass Moment When They Actually Start To Do Things In My Head.

Wow, So Much Of The Way I've Transacted My Life... So Much Of The Results That I'm Happy About Are Because Of What Daddy Did.

The Thing That Is Really Hard, And Really Amazing, Is Giving Up On Being Perfect And Beginning The Work Of Becoming Yourself.

The Voices Of Conformity Speak So Loudly. Don't Listen To Them. No One Does The Right Thing Out Of Fear. If You Ever Utter The Words, 'we've Always Done It That Way,' I Urge You To Wash Out Your Mouth With Soap.

Acts Of Bravery Don't Always Take Place On Battlefields. They Can Take Place In Your Heart, When You Have The Courage To Honor Your Character, Your Intellect, Your Inclinations, And Yes, Your Soul By Listening To Its Clean, Clear Voice Of Direction Instead Of Following The Muddied Messages Of A Timid World.

The Life Of A Good Dog Is Like The Life Of A Good Person, Only Shorter And More Compressed.

There Is Something So Settled And Stodgy About Turning A Great Romance Into Next Of Kin On An Emergency Room Form, And Something So Soothing And Special, Too.

My Home Was In A Pleasant Place Outside Of Philadelphia. But I Really Lived, Truly Lived, Somewhere Else. I Lived Within The Covers Of Books.

All The Things We Don’t Say, All The Words We Swallow, And It Makes Nothing But Trouble.

I Really Feel Like If You Can Get Past Your Fear, If You Can Say, "uh-uh, I'm Afraid To Do That And I'm Going To Do It Anyhow," That That's Really The Way To Have A Satisfying Life Moving Forward. I Think I Had That Kind Of Fearlessness Even As A Young Person. It Wasn't Tempered By Experience Or Wisdom, But It Took Me A Long Way.

I Learned That If I Ever Claim Sexual Harassment, I Will Be Confronted With Every Bozo I Once Dated, Every Women I Once Impressedas Snotty And Superior, And Together They Will Provide A Convenient Excuse To Disbelieve Me.

It Is So Easy To Exist Instead Of Live.

There Are A Million Moving Parts To Raising Kids, And You Can't Always Anticipate Them All, Especially When They Are Teenagers And Their Peers Play Such A Huge Role In Their Lives. If You Offer Independence, There Is One Kind Of Pitfall; If You Shelter Them Too Much, There Is Another. And Sometimes You Do Everything Right And Something Bad Just Happens. It's As Simple, And As Scary, As That.

On Social Welfare The Church Does So Much Good Around The World - Nuns Running Schools And Homeless Shelters, Priests Ministering To People Who Are In Crisis.

If God Had Meant Harvard Professors To Appear In People Magazine, She Wouldn't Have Invented The New York Review Of Books.

It Makes Me Angry To Think That . . . Female Sanitation Workers Will Spend Their Days Doing A Job Most Of Their Co-workers Think They Can't Handle, And Then They Will Go Home And Do Another Job Most Of Their Co-workers Don't Want.

I Learned To Love The Journey, Not The Destination. I Learned That This Is Not A Dress Rehearsal, And That Today Is The Only Guarantee You Get.

Each Instance Of Sexual Harassment Has To Be Judged On Its Merits. Facts, Timing, Motives, Credibility: All Must Be Considered Before We Make Up Our Own Minds What To Believe.

Now, A Lot Of People Are Challenged By The Fact That A Record Number Of People In Their Sixties Have Living Parents, And A Record Number Of People In Their Sixties Have Kids Who May Still Depend Upon Them.

The Problem With Freedom Is That You Just Can't Go Back. Once People See What It Means To Be Free People, You Can't Go Back. So They're Going To Keep Nattering On About This And That, And Maybe They'll Make Another Stab At De-funding The Fabulous Planned Parenthood Or Something Of The Sort. To My Mind, It's Just Not Going To Work.

The Pursuit Of Otherness, The Sense That We Are Somehow Different Than Our Brothers And Sisters, No Matter Where We Find Them, Allows For All The Other Great Evils: Racism, Sexism, Homophobia, Violence Against Gay People And Against Women.

I Go Online All The Time, I Just Don't Read About Myself. I Read A Fashion Website Called Go Fug Yourself. I Actually Correspond With The Fug Girls And That's Great.

If I Waited Long Enough And Said, "okay, So What You're Saying Is You Liked Your Life A Lot Better When You Were 30?" Everybody Would Get Real Quiet And Then Admit That That Wasn't The Case, That They Really Felt Like They Were Sort Of Growing Into Themselves In A Way.

I'm A Catholic Of The New Testament, I'm Not A Catholic Of The Hierarchy.

Stereotypes Fall In The Face Of Humanity. We Human Beings Are Best Understood One At A Time.

However, There Will Be A Republican Party Platform That Will Coalesce Around Their Convention. Unless I Miss My Guess, It Will Be Considerably More Conservative On These Issues, Perhaps Even Than Governor Romney Is, And I Think That That Will Give Americans A Clear Set Of Choices About All Issues, But About Women's Issues Too.

If I Had To Guess What The New Etch-a-sketch Picture Is Going To Be Like, It's Going To Be Considerably Less To The Right. Romney Has Backed Himself Into A Couple Of Corners That I Don't Think Will Serve Him Well In The General Election, The Main One Being Very Harsh Stands On Immigration, Which I Think Are Not Only Short-sighted But To My Mind Immoral.

Predictions That Unit Cohesion Could Not Survive Honesty About Sexual Orientation Were Simply Wrong. What Does Threaten Morale Arethe Prolonged Investigations, The Questioning Of Friends And Co-workers, The Searches Of Barracks For Magazines And Letters, The Witch Hunts.

When I'm Falling, My Girlfriends Are My Soft Landing.

There's Some Muscle Group Around Your Shoulders That Seizes Up During The Perfection Dance And Doesn't Let Go Until You Are Asleep, Or Alone. Or Maybe It Never Really Lets Go At All.

Life Is So Messy That The Temptation To Straighten It Up Is Very Strong. And The Results Always Illusory.

So You're Getting Squeezed At Both Sides. You're Taking Care Of Your Mom And Dad And You're Still Doing Caregiving With Your Kids, Which Is Not Easy. But I Think Overall, There's A Level Of Satisfaction That Might Be Unparalleled.

For Many Years, Despite What I Thought Were Really Punitive Decisions About Women In The Church, I Stayed And Stayed And Stayed. I Kept Saying To Myself, "the Catholic Church Is My Church, And By God, I'm Going To Stay Here, Despite What The Hierarchy Does."

I Think The Gift Of My Mother's Death, If Anything So Terrible Can Be Said To Have An Upside To It, Is That I Was Always Keenly Aware That Life Was Fleeting, And That You'd Better Live While You Have The Chance. As I Say In The Book, Since I Was 19 Years Old I Felt Like I Was Living For Two, And When I Out-lived My Mother, When I Got Into My Forties, It Felt Like A Miracle To Me.

It Is So Easy To Waste Our Lives: Our Days, Our Hours, Our Minutes ... It Is So Easy To Exist Instead Of Live.

[after My Mother Died, I Had A Feeling That Was] Not Unlike The Homesickness That Always Filled Me For The First Few Days When I Went To Stay At My Grandparents'' House, And Even, I Was Stunned To Discover, During The First Few Months Of My Freshman Year At College. It Was Not Really The Home My Mother Had Made That I Yearned For. But I Was Sick In My Soul For That Greater Meaning Of Home That We Understand Most Purely When We Are Children, When It Is A Metaphor For All Possible Feelings Of Security, Of Safety, Of What Is Predictable, Gentle, And Good In Life.

I Haven't Seen So Much Tippy-toeing Around Since The Last Time I Went To The Ballet. When Members Of The Arts Community Were Askedthis Week About One Of Their Biggest Benefactors, Philip Morris, And Its Requests That They Lobby The New York City Council On The Company's Behalf, The Pas De Deux Of Self- Justification Was So Painstakingly Choreographed That It Constituted A Performance All By Itself.

It's What The Taliban Does In Afghanistan, It's What Gets Done In The Middle East, And It's Clearly Something That Certain Mainly Conservative Groups In The United States Would Like To Do. They Miss The Good Old Days, When Men Were Men And Women Were Nothing.

You Write To Suit Some Sense In Yourself And Trust That That Will Resonate With A Certain Wider Readership.

Ideas Are Only Lethal If You Suppress And Don't Discuss Them. Ignorance Is Not Bliss, It's Stupid. Banning Books Shows You Don't Trust Your Kids To Think And You Don't Trust Yourself To Be Able To Talk To Them.

It's An Odd Kind Of Feeling Because It Sort Of Reminds Me Of Being Five Again. When You're A Five-year-old, You Don't Pay Any Attention To What Anyone Thinks Of You. You Just Sort Of Are In Your Skin.

Frankly, I'm Mainly Telling The Story To Myself. Thinking About Audience Is Too Daunting, And Worst Case, Invites You To Homogenize, To Soften The Hard Edges Of Things.

That's Really What I Want In A Leader; I Want Somebody Who's Really, Really Smart.

The Problem... Is Emblematic Of What Hasn't Changed During The Equal Opportunity Revolution Of The Last 20 Years. Doors Opened; Opportunities Evolved. Law, Institutions, Corporations Moved Forward. But Many Minds Did Not.

I Hadn't Written A Love Story Before And I Hadn't Written A Novel With A Happy Ending Before.

Figuring Out Who You Are Is The Whole Point Of The Human Experience.

I Do Think There's Some Aspect Of Being A Novelist That Is A Little Crazy Making.

I Know That It's Very Dispiriting For People In Their Twenties, Who Expected To Graduate From College, Get Their Own Apartments, Get A Job, And Move Forward With Their Lives, And In Fact Are Still Now Living With Mom And Dad, Which Is Challenging For All Involved.

This Is How I Learn Most Of What I Know About My Children And Their Friends: By Sitting In The Driver's Seat And Keeping Quiet.

Speech Is The Voice Of The Heart.

The Issue Is Privacy. Why Is The Decision By A Woman To Sleep With A Man She Has Just Met In A Bar A Private One, And The Decision To Sleep With The Same Man For $100 Subject To Criminal Penalties?

When Children Are Small, Parents Should Run Their Lives And Not The Other Way Around.

That Is Supposed To Be The Rallying Cry Of Women In The Age Of Aids: No Condom, No Sex. But The Dirty Little Secret Is That The Rallying Cry Is A Whisper.... The Great Unspoken On The Heterosexual Aids Front Has Been How Behavior Is Still Determined By The Old Psychosexual Minuet Of The Sexes, The Lack Of Responsibility In Young Men And Of Assertiveness In Young Women.

Knowledge Of Our Own Mortality Is The Greatest Gift God Ever Gives Us.

The Life You Have Led Doesn't Need To Be The Only Life You Have.

You Cannot Be Really First-rate At Your Work If Your Work Is All You Are.

The One Thing That I Always Got Positive Reinforcement For From Teachers, Who Really Changed My Life, Was The Written Word.

Novels Are Usually Built On Conflict, Sometimes Very, Very Difficult Conflict. It's Why Men Write War Novels - Because There You Go, There's The Conflict Writ Large.

By The Time You Kill And Mount What You Catch, It Has Lost That Very Thing That Made It Worth Having. I Knew This Only As A Vague Sense Of Disappointment At Age 10; Not Until Later Did I Recognize It As A Metaphor For Much Of Life.

Since The Age Of Five I Had Been One Of Those People Who Was An Indefatigable Reader, More Inclined To Go Off By Myself With A Book Than Do Any Of The Dozens Of Things That Children Usually Do To Amuse Themselves. I Never Aged Out Of It.

I Can't Think Of A Single Downside To Motherhood Now.

When You Really Want To Say No, Say No. You Can't Do Everything - Or At Least Not Well.

Reading Is Another Thing That Has Made Me More Human By Exposing Me To Worlds I Might Never Have Entered And People I Might Never Meet.

I've Always Had A Certain Facility With Words.

I Think A Lot Of People, But Particularly A Lot Of Women, Get To This Stage When I'd Say They're Over 50. We Face A Lot Of Hard Judgment From The World, We Women. If You're A Full-time Mother, You Should Be Out Working. If You're Out Working, Your Kids Must Be Being Overlooked.

If We Really Feel Like We're Comfortable In Our Own Skins Now, We Have A Longer Period Of Time To Live Out That Kind Of Third Or Fourth Act Of Our Life.

Don't Ever Forget The Words On A Postcard That My Father Sent Me Last Year: "if You Win The Rat Race, You're Still A Rat.

Athletes Are American Princes And The Locker Room Is Their Castle. Some Of Them Behave In Princely Fashion, Become Legitimate Heroes To Us All. And Some Are Jerks.

Our Love Of Lockstep Is Our Greatest Curse, The Source Of All That Bedevils Us. It Is The Source Of Homophobia, Xenophobia, Racism, Sexism, Terrorism, Bigotry Of Every Variety And Hue, Because It Tells Us There Is One Right Way To Do Things, To Look, To Behave, To Feel, When The Only Right Way Is To Feel Your Heart Hammering Inside You And To Listen To What Its Timpani Is Saying.

If There Is Anyone Who's Living The Work Of The New Testament, It's The Nuns Of The Catholic Church And Not The Catholic Hierarchy.

I Do Not Like Football, Which I Think Of As A Game In Which Two Tractors Approach Each Other From Opposite Directions And Collide. Besides, I Have Contempt For A Game In Which Players Have To Wear So Much Equipment. Men Play Basketball In Their Underwear, Which Seems Just Right To Me.

Barack Obama Presents As Kind Of A Cool Character, And I Think That That's His Natural Personality.

The Misdeeds Of Ordinary Men Can Be Buried With Them, And Their Lives Described In Half-truths That Are Really Half-lies. But Not A Public Man. Particularly Not This One.

If You Raise An Intelligent Girl She Will Become A Feminist Because Of The Facts Of Her Own Life. Raising Feminist Boys Is More Difficult. Raising Egalitarian Boys. One Of The Reasons You Have To Raise Them That Way Is Because It's Better For Them.

I Would Even Go To Washington, Which Is Saying Something For Me, Just To Glimpse Jane Q. Public, Being Sworn In As The First Female President Of The United States, While Her Husband Holds The Bible And Wears A Silly Pill Box Hat And Matching Coat.

Today Is The Only Guarantee You Get.

The Clearest Explanation For The Failure Of Any Marriage Is That The Two People Are Incompatible; That Is, That One Is Male And The Other Female.

I Got A Fortune Cookie That Said, "to Remember Is To Understand." I Have Never Forgotten It. A Good Judge Remembers What It Was Like To Be A Lawyer. A Good Editor Remembers Being A Writer. A Good Parent Remembers What It Was Like To Be A Child.

You Are The Only Person Alive Who Has Sole Custody Of Your Life ... Your Entire Life ... Not Just The Life Of Your Mind, But The Life Of Your Heart. Not Just Your Bank Account, But Your Soul.

On The Other Hand, I Think That Governor Romney Has To Worry That His Turnout Is Going To Be Low, That He Is Not Going To Bring Out The Evangelicals, That He Is Not Going To Bring Out The Tea Party Stalwarts. If He Does Not, Then It's Pretty Clear That He Will Lose The Election. So I Think Turnout In Key Groups Is Going To Be Really, Really Key On Election Day.

I Once Wanted To Be A Personage. Now I Am Comfortable Being A Person.

The Best Thing About Sassy Seats Is That Grandmothers Cannot Figure Out How They Work And Are In Constant Fear Of The Child's Falling. This Often Makes Them Forget To Comment On Other Aspects Of The Child's Development, Like Why He Is Not Yet Talking Or Is Still Wearing Diapers. Some Grandmothers Will Spend An Entire Meal Peering Beneath The Table And Saying, "is That Thing Steady?" Rather Than, "have You Had A Doctor Look At That Left Hand?

It's So Much Easier To Write A Resume Than To Craft A Spirit.

My Mother Was An Incredibly Loving Mother.

We're Tortured, A Lot Of Us, Believe Me.

When An Actress Takes Off Her Clothes Onscreen But A Nursing Mother Is Told To Leave, What Message Do We Send About The Roles Of Women?

I'm Boggled By The Idea Of Being An Only Child. I Know Nothing At All (i'm Happy To Say) About Having Had A Cold And Withholding Mother, About Being Divorced. The More I've Been Writing Novels, Each Novel I've Written Has Become Successively Less Grounded In Anything Approaching Autobiography.

There Are Obvious Places In Which Government Can Narrow The Chasm Between Haves And Have-nots. One Is The Public Schools, Which Have Been Seen As The Great Leveler, The Authentic Melting Pot. That, Today, Is Nonsense. In His Scathing Study Of The Nation's Public School System Entitled "savage Inequalities," Jonathan Kozol Made Manifest The Truth: That We Have A System That Discriminates Against The Poor In Everything From Class Size To Curriculum.

I'm Just Remembering Myself At 22 Or 23. I Was All Engine And No Steering. (laughter) I Had The Wheels But I Had No Steering. I Do Think It's True That When You're Younger, You're More Likely To Listen To All The Naysayers, And People Are Always Telling You How You Ought To Behave And What Kind Of Job You Should Get And How You Should Look.

Now The Baby Boomers, I.e., Us, Are Getting Older, And Were Suddenly Discovering That There Are Great Things About Getting Older. You Have Time For Your Friendships And You Appreciate Them In Ways That You Didn't Before.

And Sometimes You Do Everything Right And Something Bad Just Happens. It's As Simple, And As Scary, As That.

Ever Since The Evil Empire Turned Out To Be A Collection Of Third-world Countries, Americans Aligned On The Far Right Have Tried To Cast Gay Men And Lesbians As The New Enemy, Calculating Deviants Seducing The Nation's Young, Anti-avon Ladies Selling Sodomy Door-to-door. This Simply Won't Wash. Just As Seeing The Russians Up Close And Personal On Television Humanized Them, So Seeing The Lesbian Grandmother Of Two Little Girls Wearing Her Gold Medal With Pride Makes The Notion Of Otherness, Much Less Deviance, Silly And Ignorant.

I'm Not Making Light Of Prayers Here, But Of So-called School Prayer, Which Bears As Much Resemblance To Real Spiritual Experienceas That Freeze-dried Astronaut Food Bears To A Nice Standing Rib Roast. From What I Remember Of Praying In School, It Was Almost An Insult To God, A Rote Exercise In Moving Your Mouth While Daydreaming Or Checking Out The Cutest Boy In The Seventh Grade That Was A Far, Far Cry From Soul-searching.

I Have A Cat, The Pet That Ranks Just Above A Throw Pillow In Terms Of Required Responsibility.

I Will Never Understand People Who Think That The Way To Show Their Righteous Opposition To Sexual Freedom Is To Write Letters Full Of Filthy Words.

... It Was The Idea Of Facing A Future Skimming The Surface Of Life, Winging My Way In And Out Of Other People's Crises, Confusions, And Passages, Engaging Them Enough To Get The Story, But Never Enough To Be Indelibly Touched By What I Had Seen Or Heard.

Your Hair Isn't Quite Right And Maybe You're A Size Bigger Than You Should Be And On And On And On. I Think There Comes A Moment When You've Matured To The Point Where You Suddenly Think, Nonsense. I Am Fine Just The Way I Am.

I Grew Up In The Suburbs Of Philadelphia And One Of The Things I Like To Say Is That One Of The Biggest Impediments I Had To Becoming A Successful Writer Is I Had A Very Happy Childhood.

All Of The Qualities That You Need To Be A Good Opinion Columnist Tend To Be Qualities That Aren't Valued In Women.

You Realize That These Accidental Decisions You Make About Changing Jobs, About Moving Into An Apartment Where You Make New Friends And Confidants, About Going To One City Over Another, That Sometimes They're Completely Arbitrary Decisions That You Haven't Put As Much Thought Into As Perhaps You Should Have, And Yet They Change The Course Of Your Whole Life.

Decisions You Make

It Is This That, Finally, I Will Try To Teach My Sons About Sex, After I've Explained Fertile Periods And Birth Control And All The Other Mechanics That Are Important To Understand But Never Really Go To The Heart Of The Matter: I Believe I Will Say That When You Sleep With Someone You Take Off A Lot More Than Your Clothes.

People Ask Me All The Time If I'm From A Family Of Writers. The Literal Short Answer Is No, But My Father And His Brothers And Sisters And His Mother Are All People Who Would Sit Around With A Tom Collins And Tell Stories That Seemed To Get Better And Better Each Time They Told Them.

Ideas Are Like Pizza Dough, Made To Be Tossed Around, And Nearly Every Book Represents What My Son's Third Grade Teacher Refers To As A "teachable Moment.

The Unemployment Rate Among The Young In The United States Is Still Very Disconcerting, Although We All Know It's Nowhere Near As Bad As It Is In Some Of The European Countries, Where In Some Places It Approaches 50 Percent.

Fashions In Bigotry Come And Go. The Right Thing Lasts.

If God Is Watching Us, As Some Believers Suggest, As Though We Were A Television Show And God Had A Lot Of Free Time, The Deity Would Surely Be Bemused By How Dumbed-down Devotion Has Sometimes Become In This So-called Modern Era. How Might An Omnipotent Being With The Long View Of History Respond To Those Who Visit The Traveling Exhibit Of A Grilled-cheese Sandwich, Sold On Ebay, That Is Said To Bear The Image Of The Virgin Mary? It Certainly Argues Against Intelligent Design, Or At Least Intelligent Design In Humans.

Cheese Sandwiches

Kids And Violent Tv, Violent Tv And Violence, Violence And Kids. The Only People Missing From This Discussion Are The Parents. Where Are We? Gone. Abdicated.

Anyone Who Has Breast-fed Knows Two Things For Sure: The Baby Wants To Be Fed At The Most Inopportune Times, In The Most Inopportune Places, And The Baby Will Prevail.... And So The Baby Should, And The Mom, Too. Sometimes A Breast Is A Sexual Object, And Sometimes It's A Food Delivery System, And One Need Not Preclude Nor Color The Other.

Writing For Urbanmoms Has Awarded Me A Multitude Of Amazing Opportunities. I Have Traveled To New Places; Alone And With My Family. I Have Discovered New Products, New Books, New Trends And New Restaurants, And Been Able To Share Them With My Readers. I've Met Other Wonderful Writers And Many Incredible Celebrities.

I Always Have Music On Unless I'm Reading Aloud, Which I Always Do Before I Hand Anything In. It's The Only Way To Know If A Sentence Really Works, Without Clunks Or Cul-de-sac Clauses.

I Had That Feeling You Have When You're Watching A Sad Movie, Sobbing At The Heartbreak You Are Feeling At The Same Time That You Know The Heartbreak Isn't Exactly Real, That It Will Be Gone By The Time You Get Home And Make A Cup Of Tea. I Found A Lot Of Life Like That When I Was Younger, As Though I Was Practicing For What Came Later.

Well, We Tell Our Kids Things Like 'don't Gossip' And Then An Hour Later They Hear Us On The Phone. Stuff Like That.

A Safety Net Of Small White Lies Can Be The Bedrock Of A Successful Marriage. You Wouldn't Believe How Cheaply I Can Do A Kitchen Renovation.

The Women Of My Mother's Generation Had, In The Main, Only One Decision To Make About Their Lives: Who They Would Marry. From That, So Much Else Followed: Where They Would Live, In What Sort Of Conditions, Whether They Would Be Happy Or Sad Or, So Often, A Bit Of Both. There Were Roles And There Were Rules.

Jail Sentences Have Many Functions, But One Is Surely To Send A Message About What Our Society Abhors And What It Values. This Week, The Equation Was Twofold: Female Infidelity Twice As Bad As Male Abuse, The Life Of A Woman Half As Valuable As That Of A Man. The Killing Of The Woman Taken In Adultery Has A Long History And Survives Today In Many Cultures. One Of Those Is Our Own.

While We Pay Lip Service To The Virtues Of Reading, The Truth Is That There Is Still In Our Culture Something That Suspects Those Who Read Too Much, Whatever Reading Too Much Means, Of Being Lazy, Aimless Dreamers, People Who Need To Grow Up And Come Outside To Where Real Life Is, Who Think Themselves Superior In Their Separateness.

For Most Of My Adult Life, I Have Been An Emotional Hit-and- Run Driver--that Is, A Reporter. I Made People Like Me, Trust Me, Open Their Hearts And Their Minds To Me, And Cry And Bleed On To The Pages Of My Neat Little Notebooks, And Then I Went Back To A Safe Place And Made A Story Out Of It.

I Don't Have To Listen To The Gospel On Sunday To Know The Stories Of The New Testament. They Inform So Much Of What I Write That They're Practically Like A News Scrim That Goes Through My Brain 24/7.

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Clifford Geertz

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