“References to everybody just disturb me, and it also disturbs me that the people who make policy are not the same people who live policy. When we talk about everybody, we are leaving a whole lot of bodies out.”

“When public policy is directed toward urban spaces, it is directed toward people who sit at the margins.”

“We have to examine the extent to which we export poverty to other societies. When we decide that we will import products from China that are produced by people earning less than a dollar an hour, and grant their country most-favored-nation status (political contributions notwithstanding), we are deciding to make American workers who must earn the minimum wage compete with them. I am not suggesting that we close the doors to China or to Mexico, but I am suggesting that we look very carefully at the web of international relationships that we are creating. At the very minimum, we should understand that we have two choices in our country: we can raise world living standards by exporting those standards, or we can lower living standards- not only the world’s but also our own- by deciding that it is acceptable for the products of exploited labor to enter this country.”

“It was never reasonable or fair that women should shoulder the burden of household management, but it is possible that in an effort to move toward gender parity, some of the art and science of household management and gracious living have been lost.”

“It's amusing to me that we refer to people who live in their heads as detached, disturbed, or mad, when reality for anyone is actually a matter of the individual's state of mind. The mad truth—all people live in their heads. Whatever you think life is, it is.”

“she wanted the man who held his infant daughter in his arms with fatherly affection, the man who could talk to her for hours and hours on a blanket in the grass,laid out under the trees.that man for some reason was out of reach.”

“You stole my heart the night we met, when you sang that ridiculous song and dared me not to laugh. and every moment I have spent with you since then, you have stolen more and more of me until when you're not with me..." He drew in a breath. "When you are not with me, I am left with nothing but longing for you.”