Gene Weingarten Quotes

The whole point of corporate mascots is to be distinctive. No one in his right mind would ever confuse the Hamburglar with Mayor McCheese.

I disagree with those who suggest that we permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it can kill you. That is sheer hysteria. I think we should permanently close down the U.S. mail on the grounds that it has been making us sick for quite a while.

I don't think there is prejudice against atheists the same way there is prejudice against fat people. I don't think people hate or contemn atheists; I think people feel sorry for atheists.

For $60, I once bought a neck massage at a 'massage parlor' that advertised in 'The Washington Post.'

I do not believe in public shaming. I do believe that young adults go to college to learn things, and that this process will almost inevitably result in their making mistakes and misjudgments and otherwise acting badly.

The Pulitzer is a crapshoot. Your piece has to hit a few people the right way at the right moment.

I believe that the fragile-flower, idea-intolerant society of victimhood that is being cultivated in many colleges today is really bad.

When she was too young to resist, or even to understand, I turned my daughter into a lifelong, rabid Yankees fan.

I need an irony punctuation mark for the clueless.

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.

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

That is my theory to explain the I don't knows. It's human.

I felt like I was never going to be a great writer. I felt like I was going to be a good writer at best. I wanted to be great at something.

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.

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

Shakespeare was such a splendid vulgarian.

Let's put to rest one cliché. You can sell refrigerators to Eskimos. The people of Savoonga are Yupiks, the westernmost of the Eskimo tribes, closer to Siberians than American Eskimos in their appearance, and their customs, and their distinctive, liquidly sibilant native language. And, yes, they all have refrigerators. In the winter, food gets freezer burn if left out in the elements. Eskimos need refrigerators to keep their food warm.

Johnny Hart became much less funny after he found sobriety, and religion, around the same time.

It's as though when you order a sirloin steak, it comes with a side of maggots,

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.

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.

When you are interviewing someone, don't just write down what he says. Ask yourself: Does this guy remind you of someone? What does the room feel like? Notice smells, voice inflection, neighborhoods you pass through. Be a cinematographer.

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?

While it is true that many hep C victims became infected through blood transfusions or organ transplants or in other innocent ways, mine was contracted during my college years, when I showed as much care for my personal health as your average suicide bomber.

Because I live and work in Washington, D.C., I have a ringside seat at the world capital of The Persuasive Arts, or, as I like to call it, The Opinions Racket.

I don't see a point in advertising my marital status when men don't. Completely ridiculous.

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.

When my daughter was a senior in high school, I remember noticing, almost in passing, that her friends were very cute. Which made me realize her friends' fathers probably found Molly very cute.

Sometimes, homely things are done for the best reasons in the world and thus achieve a beauty of their own.

I always thought there was some cleverness to the joke diet in which you could eat as much as you want and as often as you want, but everything must be consumed naked in front of a full-length mirror. That would deter me!