"The idea is to convince you that you aren’t going to be happy unless you purchase something. And make no mistake, this is a powerful manipulative tool. Some experts have referred to advertising as the 'relentless propaganda on behalf of goods in general.' R. Crisp argued in an article in the Journal of Business Ethics that 'advertising overrides a consumer’s autonomy of decision making in the creation of desires, correlating an unbreakable link between products and the fulfillment of stimulated desires.' In other words, advertising is designed to hijack your brain by dictating what you desire." (>>)

"love is not reserved for wedding vows. love is lived and learned throughout our lives regardless of marital status. love is different than we think. there are no experts on love. we love and we fail and then we love again, continuously, faithfully, as best we know how. we love and we are hurt and we wonder if it is even worth it to carry on, if it is even possible. and then we love again, continuously, faithfully, as best we know how." (>>)

"I shared the Cave with three girls and one Boy Wonder, Adam, whom I adored. He was the kind of man who might've fished Zelda Fitzgerald out of the fountain at the Plaza, draped his cashmere coat around her shoulders, never asked for it back, and never told anyone the story." (>>)

"Researchers generating a computer model of a woman with Barbie-doll proportions [...] found that her back would be too weak to support the weight of her upper body, and her body would be too narrow to contain more than half a liver and a few centimeters of bowel. A real woman built that way would suffer from chronic diarrhea and eventually die from malnutrition." (>>)

"When a race is on the line, and Thurston Howell III wants to get involved, it is the rare DC player who’ll tell him to put his wallet away. Still, it’s troubling. The Supreme Court says, in effect, money equals free speech. Therefore, if you limit money in a campaign, you are limiting the free speech of the people with that money. But the corollary is also compelling. If money is indeed free speech, then the richer you are, the more free speech you have. And while limiting free speech seems anti-American, allowing somehow to buy a disproportionate share of such a basic freedom also seems a little…how can I put it? Unspeakable." (>>)

"If we acquire knowledge before we are emotionally healthy, that is if we are insecure, we are going to use it to boost our own ego and compare ourselves to others. The desire for knowledge will be like a need for a drug, then, pacifying a wounded spirit through comparative associations. Entire theological camps have been built and bolstered by this needy, angry, gluttonous desire for knowledge. But if we have confidence, if we are secure, knowledge humbles us. We realize that we did not invent truth, we simply stumbled upon it like food on a long journey." (>>)