Quote

I rewrite a great deal. I'm always fiddling, always changing something. I'll write a few words - then I'll change them. I add. I subtract. I work and fiddle and keep working and fiddling, and I only stop at the deadline.

Ellen Goodman

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Ellen Goodman
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: April 11
Journalist
Newton
Massachusetts
Change
Changing
Great
Deal
Writing
Deals
Fiddling
Work
Stop
Subtract
Something
Working
Fiddle
Always
Words
Rewrite
Write
Deadline
Keep
Add

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You can teach someone who cares to write columns, but you can’t teach someone who writes columns to care.
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In today's amphetamine world of news junkies, speed trumps thoughtfulness too often.
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I have never been especially impressed by the heroics of people convinced they are about to change the world. I am more awed by those who struggle to make one small difference.
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Maybe at 20 you can write well, but I don't think you could do what I do. Some things have to happen to you first.
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Women have gained access to the institutions, but not enough power to overhaul them.
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What he labels sexual, she labels harassment.
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instant opinion is an oxymoron. You don't get real opinions in an instant. You get reactions.
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Saving time, it seems, has a primacy that's too rarely examined.
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It has begun to occur to me that life is a stage I'm going through.
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Without even knowing it, we are assaulted by a high note of urgency all the time. We end up pacing ourselves to the city rhythm whether or not it's our own. In time we even grow hard of hearing to the rest of the world. Like a violinist stuck next to the timpani, we may lose the ability to hear our own instrument.
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If there's a single message passed down from each generation of American parents to their children, it is a two-word line: Better Yourself. And if there's a temple of self-betterment in each town, it is the local school. We have worshipped there for some time.
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I regard this novel as a work without redeeming social value, unless it can be recycled as a cardboard box.
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This packrat has learned that what the next generation will value most is not what we owned, but the evidence of who we were and the tales of how we loved. In the end, it's the family stories that are worth the storage.
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The great myth of our work-intense era is 'quality time.' We believe we can make up for the loss of days or hours, especially with each other, by concentrated minutes. But ultimately there is no way to do one-minute mothering. There is no way to pay attention in a hurry.
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My generation is the first in my species to have put fitness next to godliness on the scale of things. Keeping in shape has become the imperative of our middle age. The heaviest burden of guilt we carry into our forties is flab. Our sense of failure is measured by the grade on a stress test.
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