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

Like Disneyland, luxury retailers have long had to figure out how to overcome customers' natural inertia. Unlike less pricey stores, they tend…

— Virginia Postrel

Loft living is the antithesis of suburban domesticity, if only because the open spaces don't easily accommodate family life. Lofts also offer…

— Virginia Postrel

The glamour of twentieth-century air travel helped to persuade once-fearful travelers to take to the skies and encouraged parochial Americans to go…

— Virginia Postrel

A world of few choices, whether in jeans or mates, is a world in which individual differences become sources of alienation, unhappiness,…

— Virginia Postrel

The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fingertip. Importing polish was banned only in…

— Virginia Postrel

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

— Virginia Postrel

Glamour is an imaginative process that creates a specific emotional response: a sharp mixture of projection, longing, admiration, and aspiration. It evokes…

— Virginia Postrel

At the basic consumer level, the profusion of fonts appeals to a culture that celebrates expressive individualism.

— Virginia Postrel

We know beauty when we see it, and our reactions are remarkably consistent. Beauty is not just a social construct, and not…

— Virginia Postrel

The innovative process is a fragile one, dependent on a complex, often messy interplay of imagination, competition, and exchange. Curbing new ideas…

— Virginia Postrel

The intimate contest for self-command never ends, and lifetime happiness requires finding the right balance between present impulses and future well-being.

— Virginia Postrel

Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising children is the most important work…

— 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

Kidney disease is a low-profile, unglamorous problem, a disease that disproportionately strikes minorities and the poor. Its celebrity spokesman is blue-collar comedian…

— Virginia Postrel

The elements that create glamour are not specific styles - bias-cut gowns or lacquered furniture - but more general qualities: grace, mystery,…

— 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

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

— Virginia Postrel

America is a mosaic not of groups but of individuals, each of whom carries a host of cultural influences, some chosen, some…

— Virginia Postrel

On the Net, the bell curve reclaims its tails. The uncommon is as accessible as the common. The very fragmentation of the…

— Virginia Postrel

The Y2K bug is a genuine technical concern, consuming the energies of many specialists. But the prophecies of doom represent a broader…

— Virginia Postrel

Neon signs don't consume much power, but they look like they do. A cousin of fluorescent lighting, neon is actually quite energy…

— Virginia Postrel