All Virginia Postrel Quotes
- The whole point of movie glamour was - and is - escape. Escape
- Like the skyscraper, the automobile, and the motion-picture palace, neon signs once symbolized popular hopes for a new era of technological achievement and commercial abundance.… Abundance
- Storage problems make neon signs the most ephemeral of commercial arts. Arts
- Although people often equate them, glamour is not the same as beauty, stylishness, luxury, celebrity, or sex appeal. It is not limited to fashion or… Aesthetic
- By binding image and desire, glamour gives us pleasure, even as it heightens our yearning. It leads us to feel that the life we dream… Binding
- Glamour is not something you possess but something you perceive, not something you have but something you feel. It is a subjective response to a… Feel
- In the fall of 1978, I left the religious, conservative, biracial, slow-paced culture of South Carolina for the secular, liberal, multi-ethnic, intense culture of Princeton… Better
- America is a mosaic not of groups but of individuals, each of whom carries a host of cultural influences, some chosen, some inherited, some absorbed… Absorb
- We are material creatures who spend much of our lives on material pursuits (even building a cathedral or writing a novel requires stone and mortar… Building
- Religion, art, and science flourish best in a free society. True, freedom does not afford much opportunity for grand gestures. It has little room for… Afford
- Average Americans order nonfat decaf iced vanilla lattes at Starbucks and choose from 1,500 drawer pulls at The Great Indoors. Amazon gives every town a… Amazon
- The Taliban outlawed wearing polish in the late 1990s, punishing some offenders by amputating a fingertip. Importing polish was banned only in July 2001, which… Amputating
- The impulse for personal adornment is hard to stamp out. Adornment
- Science is about exploring the unknown and cannot offer guarantees. Cannot Offer
- The SAT is not perfect. We all know smart, knowledgeable people who do badly on standardized tests. But neither is it useless. SAT scores do… All
- Our demand for good looks, expressed in the biting comments that ensue when public figures fall short of perfection, puts enormous pressures on these individuals… Biting
- The theater itself is a lie. Its deaths are mere special effects. Its tales never happened. Even the histories are distorted for dramatic effect. The… Audience
- Society needs both parents and nonparents, both the work party and the home party. While raising children is the most important work most people will… Both
- Americans hate their cable companies - for bumbling installers, on-again-off-again transmissions, peculiar channel selections, and indifferent customer service. The only thing cable subscribers hate more… Able
- Many different relationships among patients, doctors, and drugs are possible and desirable. As in so many other areas of life, the Internet encourages experimentation. Questionnaire-based… Among