Hubris means deadly pride. Thinking you can do things better than anyone else.
If you ever meet someone who cannot understand why solitary confinement is considered punishment, you have met a misanthrope.
A home without a grandmother is like an egg without salt.
The American way of stress is comparable to Freud's 'beloved symptom', his name for the cherished neurosis that a patient cultivates like the rarest of orchids and does not want to be cured of. Stress makes Americans feel busy, important, and in demand, and simultaneously deprived, ignored, and victimized. Stress makes them feel interesting and complex instead of boring and simple, and carries an assumption of sensitivity not unlike the Old World assumption that aristocrats were high-strung. In short, stress has become a status symbol.
Updike's style is an exquisite blend of Melville and Austen: reading him is like cutting through whale blubber with embroidery scissors.
Men are not very good at loving, but they are experts at admiring and respecting; the woman who goes after their admiration and respect will often come out better than she who goes out after their love.
I've always said that next to Imperial China, the South is the best place in the world to be an old lady.
So there's only transcendence in the moment. Nobody can be transcended forever. That's why I say, "Who cares if you're enlightened forever?"
It is universally agreed that Jean Renoir was one of the greatest of all directors, and he was also one of the warmest and most entertaining.
Take away my people, but leave my factories and soon grass will grow on the factory floors. . . . . . Take away my factories, but leave my people and soon we will have a new and better factory.
My position on the POW issue has been widely misquoted and taken out of context. What I originally said and have continued to say is that the POW's are lying if they assert it was North Vietnamese policy to torture American Prisoners.