Pulitzer Prize Winners

"“It’s kind of an old-fashioned book…It’s long; it has a lot of characters; it takes a big theme. It isn’t a navel-staring, dysfunctional-family thing that’s so beloved of most American writers. It’s different, but I think people probably miss those books that were written some time ago – the big book that was written with care.”"

"And three lucky stones strung on a wire to keep the house safe."

"“I don’t think I was a particularly good or diligent mother. It took a long time for the obvious to become obvious: I could not operate in a conventional family.”"

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"I think we can all agree with Mr. Henninger's flawless logic. If a woman in India marries a snake, gay people in America should have to justify it. But here's where Henninger and I part ways. I don't see gay marriage as a slippery slope down to people marrying snakes. I see marrying snakes as a step up the slope from gay marriage. Hear me out! No! I've got no problem with people marrying snakes--as long as they're not marrying gay snakes. We must marry limbless reptiles of the opposite sex. Otherwise it's just unnatural."

"This is a footnote to our gay-marriage discussion. A woman in India last week married a snake. And it was done at a traditional Hindu ceremony attended by 2,000 people. Now, I would like to ask the proponents of gay marriage, which after all violates traditions going back through all of human history, to now absolutely positively guarantee that the next movement is not going to be allowing people to marry their pet horse, dog or cat. And you know what? Given the anything-goes culture we live in, I don't think they can deliver that guarantee."

"Atheists and the unchurched undervalue the extent to which they are getting a free ride on the social strength that religious-based virtue provides."

"Which would you like sitting in the oval office dealing with it (a major crisis)? Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, John Edwards, Geraldine Ferraro, Jimmy Carter, … or Sarah Palin? Personally, I would pick Palin."

"A friend last weekend said he thought the story about the University of New Hampshire's website publishing a bias-free language guide, which declared that use of the word "American" is "problematic," was a hoax. Of course, it was real."

"Another unsettling element in modern art is that common symptom of immaturity, the dread of doing what has been done before."

"True originality consists not in a new manner but in a new vision."

"How much longer are we going to think it necessary to be "American" before (or in contradistinction to) being cultivated, being enlightened, being humane, & having the same intellectual discipline as other civilized countries?"

"Life is always a tightrope or a feather bed. Give me the tightrope."

"After all, one knows one's weak points so well, that it's rather bewildering to have the critics overlook them & invent others that (one is fairly sure) don't exist — or exist in a less measure."

"I wonder, among all the tangles of this mortal coil, which one contains tighter knots to undo, & consequently suggests more tugging, & pain, & diversified elements of misery, than the marriage tie."

"I have never known a novel that was good enough to be good in spite of its being adapted to the author’s political views."

"Mrs. Ballinger is one of the ladies who pursue Culture in bands, as though it were dangerous to meet it alone."

"A New York divorce is in itself a diploma of virtue."

"The only way not to think about money is to have a great deal of it."

"It was part of her discernment to be aware that life is the only real counselor, that wisdom unfiltered through personal experience does not become a part of the moral tissues."

"He had come on her that morning in a moment of disarray; her face had been pale and altered, and the diminution of her beauty had lent her a poignant charm. That is how she looks when she is alone! had been his first thought; and the second was to note in her the change which his coming produced."

"Set wide the window. Let me drink the day. I loved light ever, light in eye and brain — No tapers mirrored in long palace floors, Nor dedicated depths of silent aisles, But just the common dusty wind-blown day That roofs earth's millions."

"No insect hangs its nest on threads as frail as those which will sustain the weight of human vanity."

"When people ask for time, it's always for time to say no. Yes has one more letter in it, but it doesn't take half as long to say."

"There are two ways of spreading light: to be The candle or the mirror that reflects it."

"Nancy, the most beautiful town in France, has never been as beautiful as now. (...) The last time I looked out on the great architectural setting of the Place Stanislas was on a hot July evening, the evening of the National Fête. The square and the avenues leading to it swarmed with people, and as darkness fell the balanced lines of arches and palaces sprang out in many coloured light. Garlands of lamps looped the arcades leading into the Place de la Carrière, peacock-coloured fires flared from the Arch of Triumph, long curves of radiance beat like wings over the thickets of the park, the sculptures of the fountains, the brown-and-gold foliation of Jean Lamour's great gates; and under this roofing of light was the murmur of a happy crowd carelessly celebrating the tradition of half-forgotten victories."

"An unalterable and unquestioned law of the musical world required that the German text of French operas sung by Swedish artists should be translated into Italian for the clearer understanding of English-speaking audiences."

"It frightened him to think what must have gone to the making of her eyes."

"I was never allowed to read the popular American children's books of my day because, as my mother said, the children spoke bad English without the author's knowing it."

"To James's intimates, however, these elaborate hesitancies, far from being an obstacle, were like a cobweb bridge flung from his mind to theirs, an invisible passage over which one knew that silver-footed ironies, veiled jokes, tiptoe malices, were stealing to explode a huge laugh at one's feet."

"A classic is classic not because it conforms to certain structural rules, or fits certain definitions (of which its author had quite probably never heard). It is classic because of a certain eternal and irrepressible freshness."

"In spite of illness, in spite even of the archenemy sorrow, one can remain alive long past the usual date of disintegration if one is unafraid of change, insatiable in intellectual curiosity, interested in big things, and happy in small ways."

"The worst of doing one's duty was that it apparently unfitted one for doing anything else."

"Habit is necessary; it is the habit of having habits, of turning a trail into a rut, that must be incessantly fought against if one is to remain alive."

"Art is on the side of the oppressed. Think before you shudder at the simplistic dictum and its heretical definition of the freedom of art. For if art is freedom of the spirit, how can it exist within the oppressors?"

"There's no such thing as old age; there is only sorrow."

"I can't love you unless I give you up."

"In the rotation of crops there was a recognized season for wild oats; but they were not sown more than once."

"Old age, calm, expanded, broad with the haughty breadth of the universe, Old age flowing free with the delicious near-by freedom of death."

"It was the old New York way of taking life "without effusion of blood": the way of people who dreaded scandal more than disease, who placed decency above courage, and who considered that nothing was more ill-bred than "scenes," except the behaviour of those who gave rise to them."

"'The Age of Innocence is so poetic and has stuck to me years after reading it in school."

"When the world is too much, I love to read thrillers and romance novels. I just want to lose myself in something either intriguing or ludicrously romantic. For inspiration, I go back to my favorite books, the ones I wish I had written. This seems sufficiently vague given that I haven’t listed any titles. My No. 1 go-to book is The Age of Innocence, by Edith Wharton."

"(Which classic novel did you recently read for the first time?) “The Age of Innocence,” by Edith Wharton. I’d read “Ethan Frome” in high school, but somehow missed this one. It’s a masterpiece. Despite being almost a hundred years old, it still speaks powerfully on the assumptions we make about each other, and our human failures to communicate our needs and desires."

"As we shall see in this book's chapters, traditional societies are far more diverse in many of their cultural practices than are modern industrial societies. [...] Yet psychologists base most of their generalizations about human nature on studies of our own narrow and atypical slice of human diversity. [...] That is, as social scientists Joseph Henrich, Steven Heine, and Ara Norenzayan express it, most of our understanding of human psychology is based on subjects who may be described by the acronym WEIRD: from Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic societies. [...] Hence if we wish to generalize about human nature, we need to broaden greatly our study sample from the usual WEIRD subjects [...] to the whole range of traditional societies."

"Perhaps we could benefit by selectively adopting some of those traditional practices. Some of us already do so, with demonstrated benefits to our health and happiness. In some respects we moderns are misfits; our bodies and our practices now face conditions different from those under which they evolved, and to which they became adapted. But we should also not go to the opposite extreme of romanticizing the past and longing for simpler times. Many traditional practices are ones that we can consider ourselves blessed to have discarded — such as infanticide, abandoning or killing elderly people, facing periodic risk of starvation, being at heightened risk from environmental dangers and infectious diseases, often seeing one’s children die, and living in constant fear of being attacked. Traditional societies may not only suggest to us some better living practices, but may also help us appreciate some advantages of our own society that we take for granted."

"My hope in writing this book has been that enough people will choose to profit from that opportunity to make a difference."

"The societies to which most readers of this book belong represent a narrow slice of human cultural diversity. Societies from that slice achieved world dominance not because of a general superiority, but for specific reasons: their technological, political, and military advantages derived from their early origins of agriculture, due in turn to their productive local wild domesticable plant and animal species. Despite those particular advantages, modern industrial societies didn’t also develop superior approaches to raising children, treating the elderly, settling disputes, avoiding non-communicable diseases, and other societal problems. Thousands of traditional societies developed a wide array of different approaches to those problems."

"Because we are the cause of our environmental problems, we are the ones in control of them, and we can choose or not choose to stop causing them and start solving them. The future is up for grabs, lying in our own hands. We don’t need new technologies to solve our problems; while new technologies can make some contribution, for the most part we "just" need the political will to apply solutions already available."

"What are the choices that we must make if we are now to succeed, and not to fail? [...] Two types of choices seem to me to have been crucial to tipping their outcomes towards success or failure: long-term planning, and willingness to reconsider core values. On reflection, we can also recognize the crucial role of these same two choices for the outcomes of our individual lives. One of those choices has depended on the courage to practice long-term thinking, and to make bold, courageous, anticipatory decisions at a time when problems have become perceptible but before they have reached crisis proportions. [...] The other crucial choice illuminated by the past involves the courage to make painful decisions about values. Which of the values that formerly served a society well can continue to be maintained under new changed circumstances? Which of these treasured values must instead be jettisoned and replaced with different approaches?"