Slowly we adjust, but only if we have to. Ellen Goodman More Quotes by Ellen Goodman More Quotes From Ellen Goodman When speech is divorced from speaker and word from meaning, what is left is just ritual, language as ritual. Ellen Goodman ritualspeechlanguage It is, I suppose, the business of grandparents to create memories and the relative of memories: traditions. We want to lodge moments, like snapshots, in the fleeting video of time. Ellen Goodman grandpavideomemories Civility, it is said, means obeying the unenforceable. Ellen Goodman civilitysaidmean When you live alone, you can be sure that the person who squeezed the toothpaste tube in the middle wasn't committing a hostile act. Ellen Goodman toothpastemiddlepersons I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box. Ellen Goodman social-valuesrecyclingboxes Once upon a time we were just plain people. But that was before we began having relationships with mechanical systems. Get involved with a machine and sooner or later you are reduced to a factor. Ellen Goodman machinesonce-upon-a-timepeople Everyone who deals with teens seems to agree that the most important and toughest job is staying in connection and conversation ... not delivering a lecture but saying what we think. Ellen Goodman importantjobsthinking You can fire your secretary, divorce your spouse, abandon your children. But they remain your co-authors forever. Ellen Goodman divorcewritingchildren My father used to say that if a man fools you once, he's a jerk. If he fools you twice, you're a jerk. Only he didn't use the word "jerk." Ellen Goodman usemenfather I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline. Ellen Goodman few-wordswritingadd It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I'm going through. Ellen Goodman stagelife-islife You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care. Ellen Goodman columnswho-careswriting When we describe what the other person is really like, I suppose we often picture what we want. We look through the prism of our need. Ellen Goodman wantlooksneeds I would like to say we're at a point where global warming is impossible to deny. Let's just say that global warming deniers are now on a par with Holocaust deniers, though one denies the past and the other denies the present and future. Ellen Goodman holocaustimpossiblepast [E]very time you think the entertainment moguls have hit rock bottom, they reach for the jackhammer and rat-a-tat-tat a little deeper. Ellen Goodman entertainmentrocksthinking You can believe in women's rights without believing that every woman is right. Ellen Goodman womens-rightsrightsbelieve Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined. Ellen Goodman primacysavingtime Every thing, even the so-called timesaving device and energy-efficient machine, comes these days with an elaborate set of instructions for its care and feeding. Buying a machine has become more and more like buying a pet. ... We are time-crunched. Not just by the number of things we have to do, but the number of things we have. In the late twentieth century, things have become our new dependents. Ellen Goodman energypetnumbers Today Washington is our Hollywood, the Senate our Warner Bros., the White House our Beverly Hills. People who never read a line of a movie magazine deal with the lives of leaders as if they were Elizabeth Taylor and Richard Burton. Ellen Goodman whitehousepeople Taboos are falling across our culture like dominoes. What was unspeakable yesterday dominates talk shows today. Ellen Goodman yesterdayculturefall
