You can sharply cut benefits and protections for people, as long as you announce that you’re doing it to strike a blow for individuality.

Even internet businesses need to “turn” a “profit.”

Rich people often hold grudges against their friends who are even more rich.

When things are hard for you, almost all of the people whom you think of as your friends will stop taking your calls.

When things are great for you, people whom you barely know will announce all the details of your close, intimate friendship.

A lot of those American flags we bought after 9/11 were made in China.

It turns out that gutting jobs and exporting factories overseas does not make average Americans richer.

If there is a disaster, you should start worrying precisely at the moment when they say, “There is nothing to worry about.” (Corollary: If they say, “It’s bad, but it’s not as bad as x,” that means, “It’s probably worse than x.”)

No one knows how to make a living in the music industry anymore.

Local video stores killed movie theatres. Blockbuster killed local video stores. Netflix killed Blockbuster. Chips in your head with on-demand movies will kill Netflix.

A whole lot of jobs that existed in my youth are now relics of a bygone age. Ditto the phrase,”I’m not going to answer the phone, because we just sat down to dinner.”

We have created a world in which no one ever has to be alone with their own thoughts.

Computers, which are supposed to be predictable, aren’t.

Everybody hopes that maybe mortality only happens to other people.

It turns out that real estate is not always a sure thing.

Once someone uses the phrase “The New Normal,” you’re at the top of the market.

Once someone says, “Only an idiot would buy, everybody knows that,” it’s time to buy.

When one party rewrites the rules to give themselves more power, the other party may protest. But they won’t change the rules back when they get back in power.

Most social communications innovations of the last 20 years have been made by socially awkward people who hate to communicate.

Smart phones have made rudeness socially acceptable.

People will put up with anything, as long as their illusions are maintained.

Republicans are evil, but at least they know what to do with power when they get it.

Republicans have struck a deal with frustrated white men: If you let corporations make you suffer, we’ll make sure that women and minorities suffer even more.

It turns out a lot of people don’t mind suffering, as long as they can make sure that other people are suffering even more.

Lying about wars, intelligence failures, or budgets will not get you kicked out of office.

Lying about sex will.

Life is fundamentally better for gay Americans than it used to be, although there’s still a long way to go.

A lot of technological advances protect us from the hell of other people, but they also prevent us from making real connections.

Once I was crying for 4 months straight, and I stopped once I got a B12 shot. It turns out that I needed something very badly in my life, and that something was not “a more positive attitude.”

Weather changes without notice, and so do emotions. The world is not the weather, and the soul is not the emotions.

People are still much more sympathetic towards physical illnesses than they are toward mental illnesses, even though most mental illnesses are physical in origin.

If someone you know is suffering, and you don’t give them compassionate sympathy, but instead advise them to “visualize,” you will go to a Special Hell.

This Special Hell is filled with burning, remaindered copies of The Secret. There is nothing else to read.

When people tell you that they never used to like you back in the past, do not be fooled. They are still insulting you in the present.

Sometimes, it can feel confusing to know who is really your friend. But it’s really quite simple. If someone is your friend, you feel better after you see them. If they’re not your friend, you feel worse.

This is also a good way to know whether you should keep dating someone.

A lot of people have been very fortunate in their life, and they think it’s because they’re nice people who work hard. They don’t realize that they are only able to be nice and work hard because they have been fortunate.

A few months ago, I was sitting at a cafe, and met a young woman. She was about 19 or 20, and she had two children. They were currently with their father, so she was getting a lovely bit of time to herself.

This young woman seemed very calm, and was obviously a good mother. She was speaking very eloquently about her children, what they needed at each stage of development, etc. Yet, inside of me, I had this voice in my head: Two children by the age of 19? Not by accident, but by choice? She’s doing it wrong, she’s a Bad Mother.

I thought about that judgment. I’ve spent a lot of time in very judgmental environments: New York City, young professionals, Harvard students and Harvard graduates — these are not a live-and-let-live kind of people. There are Rules for things, and right and wrong. So let’s take a peek at the conversation I had in my head:

——

19 with 2 children? How irresponsible. What a bad choice. And she seems like she doesn’t have a lot money, either. Sure, she’s sweet and loving to her children, but how long will that last, once economic reality sets in?

What should she have done instead?

Well, someone in her position should obviously wait. She should go to college. Graduate school.

Will that be good enough?

No! Graduate school is no time to have a child! She needs to embark on a career! She needs to make a living! So that she can provide her children with everything they need!

Well, if she’s in such a high-powered career, it will take her a long time to get established. When should she have kids?

Probably not until she’s 35 or 40.

But that’s at the end of a woman’s fertility cycle. She might have problems, or she might even be infertile!

There are new technologies. And she can always adopt.

And once she has her kids, how will she possibly be able to take time off to raise them?

She can take a few months off. Maybe get her hours reduced to only 40. But really, she’ll need to hire some help. That’s just one of the many perks of earning a good salary!

In other words, she’ll pay a nanny to raise her children for her, because she’s too busy to do it herself. Tell me, what kind of nanny should she get?

Well, she’ll need someone young…so that she has the energy to run around after little babies. And someone who has a calm temperament — and is very interested in the children’s welfare. Then, of course, there’s the question of cost…much as we’d like it to be otherwise, we can’t really pay a Nanny a whole lot of money. So she’d probably have to be someone from a lower economic level…

——

After going through this whole Q&A session in my head, I realized that society judges poor young women when they dare to raise their own children. But it doesn’t judge those same poor women when they’re working as nannies, and raising rich women’s children.

The whole area of career and childcare is so messed up in America. I know I’ve had a feeling of paralysis when I think about career, much of my adult life. Part of this is because it is extremely hard to keep on in your career once you have a child. Why — for example — go to law school, work hard, start a career as a lawyer…only to find, 5 years into your career, that you have to make a humongous, life-changing choice, that you want to stay home with your baby for a few years? That you might be throwing your career away forever?

In this situation, looking ahead to the future which includes motherhood, there’s the “better not to really try in the first place” option. We never talk about that. We discuss — occasionally — the women who face obstacles in terms of combining career and family. But we never talk about the women who are sure they want kids, and quietly take less career-oriented, dead-end jobs, for their whole adult lives, because they’ll just have to quit them eventually anyways, and why bother?

Something’s got to change.