Virginia Postrel

The whole point of movie glamour was - and is - escape.

— Virginia Postrel

Clothes are unique sculptures, dependent on a supporting human form and created to move.

— Virginia Postrel

Wars without military objectives have a tendency to go on forever.

— Virginia Postrel

The common intuition is that e-books should be cheap because they aren't physical - no printing, no shipping.

— Virginia Postrel

Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees.

— Virginia Postrel

The mobile middle class gravitates to the cities where housing is affordable.

— Virginia Postrel

Progress through trial and error depends not only on making trials, but on recognizing errors.

— Virginia Postrel

Dialysis does not make patients well. It simply postpones their deaths.

— Virginia Postrel

What makes a loft authentic isn't its layout or its history but its ability to give people a true home - a…

— Virginia Postrel

Surprise drives progress because innovation depends on the sort of knowledge no one can gather in a central place.

— Virginia Postrel

Medicare is immune from the competitive pressures that force private insurers to pay attention to what patients and doctors want.

— Virginia Postrel

The children who are 'our future' will inherit a world created not just by parental devotion but by the sort of zealous,…

— Virginia Postrel

Rich people in poor places want to show off their wealth. And their less affluent counterparts feel pressure to fake it, at…

— Virginia Postrel

Lofts were never supposed to be homes. They were vacant old factories and warehouses, taken over by artists looking for cheap space…

— Virginia Postrel

The Elgin Marbles were supposed to be on the Parthenon. For many works of art, a museum is an artificial setting -…

— Virginia Postrel

The United States government approaches patient choice in medication as Singapore does free speech: its pronouncements sound reasonable and tolerant until you…

— Virginia Postrel

Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives…

— Virginia Postrel

Like the rest of the genetic lottery, beauty is unfair. Everyone falls short of perfection, but some are luckier than others. Real…

— Virginia Postrel

The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for…

— Virginia Postrel

Though designed as a mere convenience, clothing sizes establish an unintended norm, an ideal from which deviations seem like flaws. There's nothing…

— Virginia Postrel

Traditional PCs face competition from specialty products like Palm Pilots and from the servers that provide the nodes in computer networks. Microsoft's…

— Virginia Postrel

Internet pharmacies return to consumers the choice promised by supporters of the 1938 Food, Drug and Cosmetic Act. That law established federal…

— Virginia Postrel

People without children do have the freedom to do things that caring parents with dependent kids can't - to work long hours,…

— Virginia Postrel

Barack Obama has brought glamour back to American politics - not the faux glamour-by-association of campaigning with movie stars or sailing with…

— Virginia Postrel

When credit is cheaper to use and easier to arrange, people do use more of it.

— Virginia Postrel

Glamour is all about transcending this world and getting to an idealized, perfect place.

— Virginia Postrel

A standard 'well woman' checkup can last as little as 10 minutes, hardly time for any in-depth discussions.

— Virginia Postrel

Even before Sputnik, scientists and policy makers worried that not enough Americans were studying science.

— Virginia Postrel

Storage problems make neon signs the most ephemeral of commercial arts.

— Virginia Postrel

Glamour doesn’t just happen, people don’t wake up in the morning glamorous.

— Virginia Postrel

On the Internet, people on the tails of the bell curve can find one another.

— Virginia Postrel

The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out.

— Virginia Postrel

Cosmetics makers have always sold 'hope in a jar' - creams and potions that promise youth, beauty, sex appeal, and even love…

— Virginia Postrel

Habituation is indeed a fact of human psychology. That's one reason we like novelty, including different cuts of jeans.

— Virginia Postrel

There's a popular saying that the Internet interprets censorship as damage and routes around it. Desire and innovation will trump policy, the…

— Virginia Postrel

Glamour is not something you possess but something you perceive, not something you have but something you feel. It is a subjective…

— Virginia Postrel

As discomfiting as it is to both market optimists and policy activists, a certain amount of instability is inherent to the economy.

— Virginia Postrel

A lot of consumers actively enjoy advertising, especially fashion print ads and clever TV commercials. The nostalgic cable channel TVLand features not…

— Virginia Postrel

The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless.…

— Virginia Postrel

Persuasion has become a kind of force. The more the advertiser knows about what consumers want, and the more desires the product…

— Virginia Postrel