Stuff About Things #22

From Mark Oppenheimer, father of four children under age seven: "Those who do have four children are presumed to be very religious or not very educated or both. My wife and I are but a little religious, super-duper educated, and just love children.... The writers Michael Chabon and Ayelet Waldman, who are married to each other, have four children. So does the psychologist and author Sonja Lyubomirsky, author of The How of Happiness.... John Updike had four children (but he and his wife then divorced, so, you know, asterisk).... I am very mindful that many people want more children than they have but have been unable to have them. My wife and I talk about our good fortune almost daily.... I know what you are thinking. Yes, this was indeed the plan. The first time we met, my wife and I discussed the fact that we both wanted four children someday.... My wife is one of two children, and they grew up in a small apartment. Her visions of larger families came from books, which she read by the dozen in the bedroom she shared with her older sister.... I come from a family of four siblings, three boys and a girl. We were usually happy, not always (what family is?). But I don’t think any of us believes that he or she would have been happier with fewer siblings.... Several times someone has said something like, “Four! Oh my God, that’s insane!” – and then quickly apologized. But I like that reaction. I’m 39 years old now, too old to be special in much. It’s all downhill for my tennis game, for my eyesight, for my memory. Number of children is still something I can win at.... I hear that Italians and Spanish and Germans and Japanese are all having 1.2 children or something like that. They are becoming countries of old people. If you don’t think that’s sad, you’re some sort of zealot. What kind, I am not yet sure. I’ll let you know when I meet you.... Yes, I worry about the environmental cost. But not as much as I should. I justify my actions by saying that the next Oppenheimer may be the one to find an antidote to climate change.... I do think that more people should have four children. But I also think more people should have zero. Those who wants lots of children or none are equally tyrannized by the reign of the two-or-three-child norm.... You know how, when you’re driving, everyone going faster than you is an asshole, and everyone slower is an idiot? For me, family size is like that. Parents with more children are insane, parents with fewer are pussies. I am aware that those with more or fewer children than my wife and I have may feel the exact same way about us.... I am very, very tired. But not as tired as my wife..."

     — Mark Oppenheimer, writer

"I have concluded that we are in a world made by rules created by an intelligence. To me it is clear that we exist in a plan which is governed by rules that were created, shaped by a universal intelligence and not by chance."
     — Michio Kaku, world-famous physicist

"Be polite, on time, and work really fucking hard until you are talented enough to be blunt, a little late, and take vacations and even then... be polite."
     — Ashton Kutcher

From Mike Rowe, famous for Dirty Jobs and other TV shows, in response to being complimented on his impressive vocabulary: "I read a lot.... I just think there's something really elegant, and maybe indulgent, about finding a different way to say a thing. And so, I think, often in an attempt to turn a phrase, I'll play with the language a lot, and stumble across words I wouldn't ordinarily use. Look, I've read Elmore Leonard and Hemingway and understand how important it is to be simple and brief, which is why I think it's a little indulgent to go the other way, but I do. I think the lexicon is extraordinary."

"Your secret was as quiet as the thunder."
     — Cochise

"To talk of it is not hard. To live it is hard."
     — Cochise

"If a big wind comes, a tree must bend, or be lifted out by its roots."
     — Cochise

"Let there be such oneness between us that when one cries, the other tastes salt." 
     — Rosabelle Believe

"Now you hold that boy and tell him you love him.... No, old man, say it like you mean it.... I ain't a good man, ain't the worst neither, just a different breed.... Say it, Mack, don't cost nothin'.... God, that's beautiful."
     — Butch Haynes, played by Kevin Costner, A Perfect World

"Self-esteem is the reputation we acquire with ourselves."
     — Nathaniel Branden

We don't see things as they are, we see them as we are.
     — Anaïs Nin

We write to taste life twice, in the moment and in retrospect. 
     — Anaïs Nin

"The early yogis were really psychologists. They were interested not in dogma, but in the way things work. How do perception and delusion work? What causes suffering? How can we see clearly? The system they devised is way more sophisticated that anything we have in the West."
     — Stephen Cope, author of The Wisdom of Yoga

"It is better to light a candle than curse the darkness.... Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people.... Do what you feel in your heart to be right – for you'll be criticized anyway.... With the new day comes new strength and new thoughts.... No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.... The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience."
     — Eleanor Roosevelt

"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself."
     — Franklin D. Roosevelt
 
"Our fears run broad and deep, and are every bit as diverse as we are. The 2017 version of Chapman University’s Survey of American Fears tabbed “corruption of government officials” as the most common fear, afflicting nearly 75 percent of respondents; concerns about the health-care system, the environment, personal finance, and war also figured in the top 10. Such spine-tingling triggers as public speaking and enclosed spaces landed in the bottom half of the 80 fears polled; clowns were slightly more scary than zombies, who were only slightly more scary than ghosts.... In the wake of 9/11, airplane ridership plummeted in the United States as many people opted to travel by car. A German psychologist estimated that in the 12 months following the attacks, 1,595 more people were killed in car accidents than would be expected in an ordinary year. That’s more than six times the number of passengers (246) who died on the four hijacked airplanes."
     — Ben Healy, The Atlantic

"It was early in the morning, the sun was just coming up, and this lioness is out with a fresh buffalo kill, calling for her cubs. We were 15 yards away, and I'm just looking at it like, 'This is why I play football.' (Such worldly sentiments are rare among his fellow NFL players.) When I first started traveling, everybody was like, 'Oh, it's weird, dude. Why are you out there doing this?' Well, I think it's weird if you have endless resources and the only place you go is Las Vegas or South Beach. To me, that's asinine."
     — Deandre Levy, from Men's Journal magazine

"This may not surprise anyone aged 18-34 but according to US Census data, if you're in that age bracket, your life differs wildly from your parents. Gone are the steady jobs and home ownership of yore. Gone too is married life – more 18-34 year-olds live with their parents than with a spouse.... about a third of millennials still live at home with their parents.... Last year, research found it was the most common living arrangement for young adults – for the first time in 130 years."
     — BBC, April 2017