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" In the world of opinion writing, there's something called the 'to be sure' paragraph. A sort of rhetorical antibiotic, it seeks to defend against critics by injecting a tiny bit of counter-argument before moving on with the main point. "

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" If you do the things you enjoy and are good at, I really have a feeling that that will lead to having a fulfilling life, and people with fulfilling lives are able to be 'good people.' "

Meghan Daum

People

Good People

Good

" Posting a brag, humble or otherwise, and then waiting for people to respond is the equivalent of having a conversation in which all you do is wait for your turn to speak. "

" It may take a village to raise a child, but not every villager needs to be a mom or dad. Some of us just need to be who we are. "

" Self-esteem, the kind that comes from finding the sweet spot between a healthy fondness for yourself and healthy self-skepticism, tends to get harder to come by the older we get. "

" When there's so much choice, it can get overwhelming and it's hard to make a choice. "

" Not everyone in Santa Monica is a well-heeled, juice-cleansing, Prius-driving yogini, but for better or worse, that is the city's dominant chord. "

" Much of the magic of language, of course, lies in its fluidity. "

" Confessions are not processed or analysed; they're told in a moment of desperation to a priest or to somebody interrogating you about a crime. "

" Handwriting challenges aside, I love paper cards. I love the endless stewing involved in picking them out at the store. I love buying holiday stamps at the post office, and I love that 'whoosh' sound the cards make when I drop them into the mail slot. "

" I've been a freelancer my entire career, and, at any given time, I have several deadlines for all sorts of things, whether it's some magazine piece or ad copywriting or anything. "

" For me, writing essays is very much about processing ideas and offering them up to the reader so that they are fully cooked. "

Meghan Daum

Writing

Much

" The reason it was so bruising when someone said I was from a rich family is that, like many of us, I'm deeply invested - probably overly so - in the myth of my own self-creation. I like to believe that I got where I am, such as it is, by working hard and charting my own course. "

" I don't think anyone's ever accused me of too much self-love. "

" Opinion is dominating, which is absolutely ridiculous - there wouldn't be anything for people to have opinions about if there weren't people out there gathering facts on the ground. "

" Writers are the ones who figure out how to put their observations into words. "

" Other dogs may do their jobs in their own unique and perfectly wonderful ways, but there will always be that dog that no dog will replace, the dog that will make you cry even when it's been gone for more years than it could ever have lived. "

" A young female essayist saying they're influenced by Joan Didion is like a young female singer-songwriter saying they're influenced by Joni Mitchell. "

Meghan Daum

Singer-Songwriter

Young

" This whole notion that it's somehow easy and simpler to live in the country is such a fallacy. "

" You don't realize how much a dog's presence defines the contours of your home until, in its absence, the walls seem to relocate themselves. "

" I always tell writers that it's good to have an area of expertise. It's a really practical answer, I know, but know about science or about sports or about medicine, so you can work as a science writer or a sports writer. Don't just know about yourself. "

" What I think is important about essayists - about the essay, as opposed to a lot of personal writing that kind of finds its way into public view - is that the material really has to be presented in a processed way. "

" It's not that I don't get on bandwagons; I just climb aboard only after most of the band has packed up and left for the next gig. "

" I don't keep a diary or a journal. Sometimes I'll send emails to friends, and that's a way of recording what I was thinking at any given time. But I've never been a journal keeper. "

" Old-fashioned girl that I am, I still have a landline, though it rarely rings - and when it does, especially without warning, there's rarely anything good on the other end. "

" Few targets of ridicule are as easy to hit as owners and handlers of competitive show dogs. "

" Just as I never liked bumper stickers - even though I do brake for animals, and if I had a kid, she would definitely be an honor student - I don't like the idea of expressing my views through social-media-controlled rainbow-or-anything-else-ification. "

" I respond to about a quarter of comments. It's a good barometer of my mental health - when I'm healthy and busy, I don't read them. "

" As with 'feminism,' not to mention 'liberalism' and 'conservatism,' 'political correctness' tends to mean what you want it to mean, which also pretty much amounts to utter meaninglessness. "

" It is important for children to grow up in a world where there are all kinds of adults and role models around them, for them to know it's not just parents and people who are parents that care about them, but that there are people who are living other kinds of lives. "

" I've always been interested in this notion of what is authentic and how we define that and why our culture imposes certain emotions and emotional constraints onto experiences. "