There are people who ask strangers and bare acquaintances impertinent questions as if they were entitled to an answer. Sometimes they turn professional, and become journalists.
Working
Business is more agreeable than pleasure; it interests the whole mind more continuously, and more deeply.
—Bagehot
The critic’s indispensable service is not to praise greatness, which makes its own way in the world, but to refrain from praising mediocrity, which requires his assistance.
It has always conferred status to consume tax revenue, and opprobrium to produce it.
Everyone is in favor of upward social mobility; the other direction is more controversial.
There is in America an unbridgeable psychological divide, made manifest every April 15th, between those who receive checks from the government and those who write them.
Writing and computer programming are usually done worse when they are done for money.
It is the quack, needing protective coloration, who affirms most zealously the principles of his profession.
Journalists used to be raffish and amusing liars, and they are no longer raffish or amusing.
The best places don’t let people in, and the worst don’t let them out.
It is crime, of all fields, that most attracts the woefully underqualified.