There are only two reasons for buying a book, after all. Either we intend to read it, in which case most of us find a printed version preferable, or we don’t intend to read it, in which case a printed version is absolutely essential.

Culpable obtuseness. He should know better. That’s one reason why we don’t use the a-word, for example, of little children. They can merit the s-word, because there’s a malignity that’s innate in little kids sometimes, but you can’t merit the a-word until you’re old enough so that you ought to know better.

When it comes to being slaves to fashion, American managers make adolescent girls look like rugged individualists.

Few people become assholes reluctantly.

There are only two reasons for buying a book, after all. Either we intend to read it, in which case most of us find a printed version preferable, or we don't intend to read it, in which case a printed version is absolutely essential.

The Italian historian Armando Petrucci has done more than anyone else to revive interest in public writing. His groundbreaking Public Lettering: Script, Power, and Culture surveys the forms and uses of epigraphic writing from classical antiquity to the twentieth century.

When the world changes, correlation goes away… Causals are what endure.

The choice of words is important when things like this happen,

These technologies are interesting in the same way that a shoe can also be a hammer. There are incidental uses for cell phones that often can be something that changes it altogether.

Language doesn't so much cause divisions as it symbolizes them. I don't think using 'evacuee' or 'refugee' will change people's minds, but it will signal differences about how we think about class that has always been there.