Gene Weingarten Quotes

I think we too often go soft in trying to spare people the agony of confronting reality.

Mostly, you become a writer not because you want to get rich or famous, but because you have to write; because there is something inside that must come out.

We want to believe that the world is understandable and controllable and unthreatening, that if we follow the rules, we'll be okay. So, when this kind of thing happens to other people, we need to put them in a different category from us. We don't want to resemble them, and the fact that we might is too terrifying to deal with. So, they have to be monsters.

Donald Trump is a boor, and cannot stop being a boor.

The one thing an aspiring writer must understand is that it's hard. If you think it's not hard, you're not doing it right.

The verb "Garland" should be created. It would mean to unfairly put a stinking albatross around someone's neck, to make him unemployable.

Ask creative people where they get their ideas, and they will roll their eyes. It's the most common question, but it's also a bad one because the answer is inevitably disappointing. From the inside, creativity seems like an arduous task, often involving plebeian, imperfect choices, driven less by inspiration than by deadline.

Politics is how you think about life itself.

It is a cliche, and it is also true, that humor springs from existential pain - from a need to blunt the awareness that life is essentially a fatal disease of unpredictable symptoms and unknown duration.

The horrifying thing is that nearly half of America seems in synch with xenophobia and race-baiting.

One thing I am learning from the kitten is that everything he is doing seems to be in preparation for murder.

America is an incredibly polarized country politically. I think ANY Republican would start out with 42 percent of the vote.

Well, let’s start with the maxim that the best writing is understated, meaning it’s not full of flourishes and semaphores and tap dancing and vocabulary dumps that get in the way of the story you are telling. Once you accept that, what are you left with? You are left with the story you are telling. The story you are telling is only as good as the information in it: things you elicit, or things you observe, that make a narrative come alive; things that support your point not just through assertion, but through example; quotes that don’t just convey information, but also personality.

I once found myself driving, smoking a cigar, taking notes, and talking on the phone at the same time. I only became completely aware of this when I had to shift, and realized something had to give.

I think Marco Rubio could never have recovered from revealing himself to be pathetic.

Knowing the identity of the leaker helps you analyze the likelihood that the material is real.

Shakespeare was such a splendid vulgarian.

We separated like oil and water. In the cafeteria, you'd see a table of black jocks, table of white jocks, table of rich white kids, table of Hispanic kids, table of Chinese kids, table of druggies, table of chatterboxes, and so on. Wait! There's a diverse table over there! With a few kids of different tenacities and economic status! Oh, that's the nerds. That's where I sat. We weren't cool enough for the other tables, so we didn't discriminate against anybody.

Hillary Clinton rubs people the wrong way, for valid reasons.

Making stuff up is the worst thing a journalist can do. Plagiarizing is the second worst.

You know, I am not a particular Kennedy apologist or an awed fan - I was 12 when he was murdered - but I have discussed Kennedy with historians. For his incredibly short tenure, he was a very important president. Many put him in the second tier, below the big three and surrounded by Truman and Eisenhower. Kennedy moved our soul. Changed our thinking about service and governance. And won big in the greatest nuclear crisis of the Cold War.

Peggy Noonan is not as good a columnist as my colleague Kathleen Parker, in my opinion, but they share something related to their Pulitzers. Kathleen won in in 2010. They won it for a similar reason. They broke from their crowd, and sprinted away. They delivered the politically unexpected take, at some peril to their readership.

Life entails risk, and you have to draw some lines.

Every single fat comic uses his weight as a punchline. There is something sad about that.

I like to eat alone in restaurants, with a book, particularly if I am out of town, alone, on business. It's relaxing. I feel not even a twinge of embarrassment. Is this gender-related? Is there a lingering feeling among women that if they are alone in public, they will be judged to be spinsters or spinsters-to-be?