in our culture, the professional, and largely white, middle class is taken as a social norm - a bland and neutral mainstream - from which every other group or class is ultimately a kind of deviation.

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.

Dead. Never been that before. Not even once.

I just love cars I've been like that since I was a kid. It's an infatuation because we grew up poor. Cars was something we were always trying to get.

[Y]ou wonder why anyone would make the mistake of calling it the Commerce Clause instead of the 'Hey, you -can-do-whatever-you-feel-like Clause?

What gives Bach and Mozart a place apart is that these two great expressive composers never sacrificed form to expression.

I don't have anything to hide but what happens is the media tend to beat up what I say.

Imagination is the voice of the daring.

You know, if Michael Jordan can scream at the refs, me as Kanye West, as the Michael Jordan of music, can go and say, 'This is wrong.'

It ought to be realized by all dog owners that obesity shortens a dog's life quite considerably, a life which is much too short anyhow.

Think of what you have rather than of what you lack. Of the things you have, select the best and then reflect how eagerly you would have sought them if you did not have them.

My pipe business I created from scratch; my media assets and bank I bought from the secondary market.