Meghan Daum Quotes
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I have a distinct memory, dating back to 1989 or so, of sitting around with my college dorm mates talking about a new term that was popping up everywhere: 'political correctness.'
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I love the essay. It's my favorite genre to work in.
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The search for happiness has long been a dominant feature of American life. It's a byproduct of prosperity, not to mention the most famous line in the Declaration of Independence.
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Just as I never liked bumper stickers - even though I do brake for animals, and if I had a kid, she would definitely be an honor student - I don't like the idea of expressing my views through social-media-controlled rainbow-or-anything-else-ification.
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Writers are the ones who figure out how to put their observations into words.
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Because of social media, we have a lot of personal essays floating around; you see them on Facebook: everyone's either reading them or writing them. Some of them are great; some of them are diary entries put forth as essays.
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Like a physically beautiful but otherwise rather dull person who trades on his or her looks, Southern California swings perpetually between a profound inferiority complex and an equally profound sense of entitlement.
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For a kid, self-esteem can be as close at hand as a sports victory or a sense of belonging in a peer group. It's a much more complicated and elusive proposition for adults, subject to the responsibilities and vicissitudes of grown-up life.
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Mother's Day, like motherhood itself, is fraught with peril. There are so many ways to get it wrong, so many opportunities to disappoint and be disappointed.
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When there's so much choice, it can get overwhelming and it's hard to make a choice.
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Other dogs may do their jobs in their own unique and perfectly wonderful ways, but there will always be that dog that no dog will replace, the dog that will make you cry even when it's been gone for more years than it could ever have lived.
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It may take a village to raise a child, but not every villager needs to be a mom or dad. Some of us just need to be who we are.
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As with 'feminism,' not to mention 'liberalism' and 'conservatism,' 'political correctness' tends to mean what you want it to mean, which also pretty much amounts to utter meaninglessness.
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Handwriting challenges aside, I love paper cards. I love the endless stewing involved in picking them out at the store. I love buying holiday stamps at the post office, and I love that 'whoosh' sound the cards make when I drop them into the mail slot.
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Checking email every 45 seconds is not only compulsive, it's presumptuous. It suggests a belief that anyone who sends us a message needs us to read it immediately, even if the message is from SkyMall telling us our Bigfoot Garden Yeti statue has shipped.
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A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell.
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Not everyone in Santa Monica is a well-heeled, juice-cleansing, Prius-driving yogini, but for better or worse, that is the city's dominant chord.
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Being taken down a few pegs is humbling. Knowing that life is not easy or fair is humbling. Receiving a great honor - well, that would be called an honor.
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Opinion is dominating, which is absolutely ridiculous - there wouldn't be anything for people to have opinions about if there weren't people out there gathering facts on the ground.
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Confessions are not processed or analysed; they're told in a moment of desperation to a priest or to somebody interrogating you about a crime.
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We're not handed situations based on our established likes and dislikes; we get what's available.
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It's not that I don't get on bandwagons; I just climb aboard only after most of the band has packed up and left for the next gig.
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I don't confess in my work because to me, that implies that you're dumping all your guilt and sins on the page and asking the reader to forgive you.
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Each year, in my quaint efforts to send out paper holiday cards with personal messages, I probably discard one for every three I actually manage to put in the mail. The reason is that my handwriting is now less legible than it was when I was in the second grade.