A Quote by Daniel Mendelsohn

Shopping as lifestyle is really a sub-cultural problem. When the strictures that set you apart or oppressed you, disappear, is there a way, legitimately, to maintain your sense of specialness and difference? And how do you express that? Does it just become a kind of kitsch? You can say this of gay people, but it's true for Jewish people, Italian Americans, everyone who deals with it. It's a question of assimilation. How can you be assimilated and special at the same time?
The question people ask me all the time is, 'How was it playing a gay character? How was it pretending to love a man?' And I don't mean to be abrasive, but that's just the stupidest question in the world to me. To assume there is a difference is ignorance. You're born a certain way. I was born loving women. I could have been born loving men.
The basis of national identity is to say, "This is authentic to me or my forebears," and is there even such a thing? How authentic is it to your life? Just because your grandfather did it, what does that have to do with you? If I say I'm working in the style of Rembrandt, so what? You can say it, but are you really? No, because when you try to literally copy a cultural artifact, you change it. It dissolves, and then who's looking at it? People who appreciate that kind of drawing, or people it means nothing to?
I was really strict about my daughter sleeping in her own room, and now she's really independent and likes it that way. So I think for all new moms, I can totally see how you can get wrapped up in making your child 100% your time. But if you could just take 5% or 10% for yourself a day, it won't just make the difference in your confidence, but also your sanity. I think once you just set boundaries and how you're going to parent - everyone parents differently so I hate to be that person to tell them how anyone should parent, I think whatever works for you works.
Animals are like autistic savants. In fact, I'd go so far as to say that animals might actually be autistic savants. Animals have special talents normal people don't, the same way autistic people have special talents normal people don't; and at least some animals have special forms of genius normal people don't, the same way some autistic savants have special forms of genius. I think most of the time animal genius probably happens for the same reason autistic genius does: a difference in the brain autistic people share with animals.
Maternity has come a really long way from when my mother or my friends' mothers were shopping, but it's still very limited and it's hard. Just because you become pregnant doesn't mean your style changes. You still want to maintain your same aesthetic, but it can be very challenging with what is out there. It's been interesting to kind of learning to dress around it.
When you say what is the difference between me and my stage name the idea is that as a musician you always think of yourself as inhabiting a certain cultural space in the kind of a cultural landscape, so when I say cultural space what I mean to imply there is that you exist within certain parameters of how people think of culture.
Question: When you’re one of the few people who can do something to fix a problem, just how responsible does that make you for it? Answer: It’s how you choose to answer that question that defines you.
I am one of the people who don't really agree with that lifestyle. I wasn't brought up that way; it wasn't how I was raised, but I do have a lot of friends and a lot of people that I love dearly who are gay and homosexual, and they're such sweet, nice people.
The Jewish culture - people that are Jewish have a certain cultural habit that they've formed and one of those habits is an appreciation of theater and music - these are cultural things one does associate with values that are promulgated by Jewish families. I think that's a good thing.
When somebody meets me in the street, they say, 'Hello, how you doing?' And I say the same back. It's just two minutes of your time and it's alright. I don't like people taking liberties when I'm with my family, but mostly people are really polite and that's lovely.
When something happens - good, bad or ugly - you find a way to be able to do your part for your community. How do you better the lives of Indigenous people, how do you give back to the land, how do you stay connected? All of this is the same question.
I'm aware that as much as people like hearing and listening to my music, it's also very therapeutic for me to be able to express myself some way - how I'm feeling, how I'm thinking, and just saying what's in my heart and on my mind. I need to do that to maintain my sanity.
I have the same problem as Marilyn. We attract people the way honey does bees, but they're generally the wrong kind of people. People who want something from us - if only our energy. We need a period of being alone to become ourselves.
I take things very seriously, and I give myself time to come down and to ramp up, and it's an inside spiritual journey for me. I feel like acting is a way of feeling your personality, and it's really special. Special to have this kind of effect on people. You can only have that effect if you're really outside of yourself. You can't look at yourself and do what I do at the same time. I have done it that way in the past, but it doesn't really work. I can only soar within the parameters of time, and I use music analogies.
The only way your powers can become great is by exerting them outside the circle of your own narrow, special, selfish interests. And that is the reason of Christianity. Christ came into the world to save others, not to save himself; and no man is a true Christian who does not think constantly of how he can lift his brother, how he can assist his friend, how he can enlighten mankind, how he can make virtue the rule of conduct in the circle in which he lives.
The cultural value of 'Gossip Girl' was this interesting question. Sure, it seemed to have been a worldwide, cultural phenomenon for some time. And, yes, anywhere I go, I do get recognized. At the same time, it also lacked the kind of importance that people might anticipate.
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