Fang

“A man who is holding down a menial job and thereby supporting a wife and children is doing something authentically important with his life. He should take deep satisfaction from that, and be praised by his community for doing so. If that same man lives under a system that says the children of the woman he sleeps with will be taken care of whether or not he contributes, then that status goes away. I am not describing a theoretical outcome, but American neighborhoods where, once working at a menial job to provide for his family made a man proud and gave him status in his community, and where now it doesn't. Taking the trouble out of life strips people in major ways which human beings look back on their lives and say, ‘I made a difference.”
― Charles Murray, Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010

“He had said it bravely, and that is why one can trust Beethoven when he says other things.”
― E.M. Forster, Howards End

“i could not but be moved -- by the great and the humble alike -- to pity and admiration for those who demonstrated repeatedly that to ' be and do' is not a given.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Men in My Life

“All I had to do was get old enough and New York would be mine.”
― Vivian Gornick, The Odd Woman and the City