Quote

I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore with an extremely high concentration of Jewish families - where the Levys and Cohens in the high school yearbook went on for pages, where I could count far more temples than I ever could churches. Anti-Semitism, in our cultural biodome, was mostly an abstract concept.

Jeffrey Kluger

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jeffrey Kluger
Age: 70
Born: 1954
Born: May 21
Author
Contributing Editor
Journalist
Lawyer
Screenwriter
Writer
School
Concept
Jewish
Ever
Families
Concentration
Suburb
Concepts
Count
Yearbook
Pages
Cultural
Semitism
Grew
Anti
Baltimore
Went
Mostly
Suburbs
High
Extremely
Churches
Church
Abstract
Temples

More quotes by Jeffrey Kluger

Image
There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all?
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
There are popular celebrities, there are unpopular celebrities and then there are the walking dead. You know the walking dead when you see them: they look like Mel Gibson, still striving for drunken charm in an L.A. County mug shot, after getting picked up on a DWI charge that included anti-semitic slurs directed at the police.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
A mere ape in our world may be a scholar in its own, and the low life of any beast may be a source of deep satisfaction for the beast itself.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth - and perhaps even in the womb - to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can't therefore argue that the net doesn't exist. Just ask the fish.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
There's a universe inside your head - a place of pictures and passions, of songs and sorrows. It's everything you are - and it's an utter mystery.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
When our culture shifts, it tends to overcorrect, throwing out everything associated with an era we've moved past, rather than saving what was good and combining it with what is new.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
From the time we're born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and coconspirators, our role models and our cautionary tales.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
There are a lot of downsides to being male. We age faster and die younger. But give us this: we're lifetime baby-making machines. Women's reproductive abilities start to wane when they're as young as 35. Men? We're good to go pretty much till we're dead.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Photography is about freezing a moment in time McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
My family went through divorces and remarriages and the later, blended home - and then watched that home explode, too.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Your parents leave you too soon and your kids and spouse come along late, but your siblings know you when you are in your most inchoate form.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
My own life has in some ways been a decades-long tour of the sibling experience. I have full sibs, I have half-sibs, and for a time I had step-sibs.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Athletes often start life at the opposite end of the wealth and prestige spectrum, but as soon as they exhibit an unusual talent for swinging a bat or sinking a free-throw they may find that the rules have been suspended for them. They are waved through school and into the pros, and incidents of bad behavior are overlooked or covered up.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Part-black generally means all-black in Americans' minds. Just as part-Asian or part-Hispanic or part-anything-else usually puts individuals in those minority-groups' camps.
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Why are some people born with a fire in the belly, while others need something to get their pilot light lit?
Jeffrey Kluger
Image
Even the best computer in the world has no idea that it exists. You do. No one knows what creates that ineffable awareness that we're here.
Jeffrey Kluger