“Like most sensible people, you probably lost interest in modern art about the time that Julian Schnabel was painting broken pieces of the crockery that his wife had thrown at him for painting broken pieces of crockery instead of painting the bathroom and hall.”

The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the ’70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.

No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it’s probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.

Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.

Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.

What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it’s so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I’ve received a spam text.

No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.

All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.

I’m too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom’s earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.

Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.

Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

I read good. I was an English major.

Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.

A gun fires of its own accord and a man is shot. And a broken-down old house no good for anything but chasing kids has to trip over us. Blind accidents. What can you do against blind accidents?

How have I never realized before that for all the strong, kind parts of him, there are also hurting, broken parts?

If you ask any police officer what the worst part of the job is, they will always say breaking bad news to relatives, but this is not the truth.

For those of you who may be unaware, [Michael] Boskin is the economist/weasel/fraud who helped to officially distort the CPI, making it more or less worthless as a measure of inflation.

I want to point the way to something that should forever lure them, when the TV set is broken and the movie is over and the school bell has rung for the last time.

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. Where tile catching the light (ting! Ting!)” (p. 3).

In search of some rest, in search of a break From a life of tests where something’s always at stake Where something’s always so far What about my broken car?

I’ve fallen down crevasses, been bitten by snakes, been knocked unconscious, had various limbs broken and once, a heavy camera came plunging down which very nearly decapitated me.