List of Ellen Goodman Quotes

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.

I Am A Member Of A Small, Nearly Extinct Minority Group, A Kind Of Urban Lost Tribe Who Insist, In The Face Of All Evidence To The Contrary, On The Sanctity Of Being On Time. Which Is To Say That We On-timers Are Compulsively, Unfashionably Prompt, That There Are Only Handfuls Of Us In Any Given City And, Unfortunately, We Never Seem To Have Appointments With Each Other.

Alternative Lifestyles, The Emotional Fly-drive Packages Of Our Times, Come Equipped With A Set Of Clothes, A Choice Of Authors, A Limited Menu Of Sports And A Discount Coupon Book Of Clichés.

The Same People Who Tell Us That Smoking Doesn't Cause Cancer Are Now Telling Us That Advertising Cigarettes Doesn't Cause Smoking.

On Television, Journalists Now Routinely Appear On Talk-shows-with-an-attitude Where They Are Encouraged To Say What They Think About Something They May Not Have Finished Thinking About.

Without Even Knowing It, We Are Assaulted By A High Note Of Urgency All The Time. We End Up Pacing Ourselves To The City Rhythm Whether Or Not It's Our Own. In Time We Even Grow Hard Of Hearing To The Rest Of The World. Like A Violinist Stuck Next To The Timpani, We May Lose The Ability To Hear Our Own Instrument.

I Don't Know Exactly Why The Notion Of Homeownership Has Such A Grasp On The American Imagination. Perhaps As Descendants Of Landless Immigrants We Turn Our Plots Into Symbols Of Stability.

We Each Have A Litany Of Holiday Rituals And Everyday Habits That We Hold On To, And We Often Greet Radical Innovation With The Enthusiasm Of A Baby Meeting A New Sitter. We Defend Against It And - Not Always, But Often Enough - Reject It. Slowly We Adjust, But Only If We Have To.

How Many Of The People I Know - Sons And Daughters - Have Intricate Abstract Expressionist Paintings Of Their Mothers, Created Out Of Their Own Emotions, Attitudes, Hands. And How Many Have Only Polaroid Pictures Of Their Fathers.

It Is Not That Fathers Are Better Or Worse, Not That They Are More Loved Or Criticized, But Rather That They Are Viewed With Far Less Intensity. There Is No Philip Roth Or Woody Allen Or Nancy Friday Who Writes About Fathers With A Runaway Excess Of Humor, Horror ... Feeling. Most Of Us Let Our Fathers Off The Hook.

I Am A Political Recidivist. An Incorrigible, Repeat Voter. A Career Lever-pusher. My Electoral Rap Sheet Is As Long As Your Arm. Over The Course Of Three Decades, I Have Voted For Presidents And School Board Members. I Have Voted In High Hopes And High Dudgeon. I Have Voted In Favor Of Candidates And Merely Against Their Opponents. I Have Voted For Propositions Written With Such Complexity That I Needed Noam Chomsky To Deconstruct Their Meaning. I Have Been A Single-issue Voter And A Marginal Voter. I Have Even Voted For People Who Ran Unopposed. Hold An Election And I'll Be There.

Slowly We Adjust, But Only If We Have To.