Meghan Daum Quotes
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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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I loved 'About Schmidt'. I like Alexander Payne's work a lot.
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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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When I talk to students or young writers about the importance of being unafraid to take controversial positions, I'm struck by the degree to which they can't entertain a thought, much less commit one to paper, without imagining the cacophony of snark they'll get in response.
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Our culture is so obsessed with the idea that you're going to go through a crisis or some difficult event and come out the other side a changed or improved person, and I just think that if you're honest, that often does not happen, and in fact, it shouldn't happen.
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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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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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My goal is to invite readers to think along with me and draw their own conclusions.
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I was enamored of New York City intellectual life and was really into Philip Roth because I was raised by self-loathing Midwesterners who were from southern Illinois, who felt like fish out of water when they came to the East Coast when I was a kid.
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Before digital and mobile communications effectively tethered us to an invisible, infinite 'wire,' even those with the most hectic schedules were usually willing to answer the phone if they happened to be home when it rang.
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Quitting Facebook would be like partially erasing myself. Quitting Twitter would constitute further erasure. Pretty soon, I'd be invisible. I was never on Instagram or Tumblr, which I guess means I never completely existed in the first place.
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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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I never sit down to write anything personal unless I know the subject is going to go beyond my own experience and address something larger and more universal.
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I love writing essays and articles, so it's hard for me to resist taking assignments that inevitably pull me away from larger projects.
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I was just 13 when 'The Big Chill' was released in late September 1983, so I didn't catch all of its nuances when I sneaked into the theater to see it. But I could tell one thing for sure: These people were grown-ups.
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I think people seem to want to read pieces that are shorter but not as short as the pieces they can read in small bites on the Internet. It may be that the sort of long essays are hitting a sweet spot between the tiny morsels online and the full-length book.
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Let's face it: every campus has its share of students who can't quite comprehend that extreme political correctness is often born of the same intolerance and anti-intellectualism as standard-issue bigotry.
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Air travelers, of course, are famous for their hubris. They carry on too many bags and use the restroom when the seat-belt sign is on.
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Few targets of ridicule are as easy to hit as owners and handlers of competitive show dogs.
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I loved Woody Allen's short pieces. I was equally influenced by Woody Allen and Norman Mailer. I was very into this idea of being high-low, of being serious and intellectual but also making really broad jokes.
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Old-fashioned girl that I am, I still have a landline, though it rarely rings - and when it does, especially without warning, there's rarely anything good on the other end.
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Almost nothing is more tedious than complaining about the weather.
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I don't think anyone's ever accused me of too much self-love.
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What I want is to have people's notion of adulthood no longer be so defined by being a parent. There is some kind of conventional wisdom that you're not really a mature person until you become a parent.