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
Non-fiction about personal subjects is going to attract more user comments than a foreign correspondent writing from Syria – unfortunately. – Meghan Daum
I was enamored of New York City intellectual life and was really into Philip Roth because I was raised by self-loathing Midwesterners who were from southern Illinois, who felt like fish out of water when they came to the East Coast when I was a kid. – Meghan Daum
The right way to win is to recognize that winning isn’t the end game, but rather the beginning of new opportunities – maybe even opportunities to help other people win. – Meghan Daum
I think people seem to want to read pieces that are shorter but not as short as the pieces they can read in small bites on the Internet. It may be that the sort of long essays are hitting a sweet spot between the tiny morsels online and the full-length book. – Meghan Daum
I loved Woody Allen’s short pieces. I was equally influenced by Woody Allen and Norman Mailer. I was very into this idea of being high-low, of being serious and intellectual but also making really broad jokes. – Meghan Daum
As a mentor and an advocate, I’ve seen no end to the ways that childless people can contribute to the lives and well-being of kids – and adults, for that matter. – Meghan Daum
The irony of the media and people in big cities is that they’re charged with defining the entire culture, when in reality they don’t even live in that culture. They live in such a rarified, tiny world. – Meghan Daum
Each year, in my quaint efforts to send out paper holiday cards with personal messages, I probably discard one for every three I actually manage to put in the mail. The reason is that my handwriting is now less legible than it was when I was in the second grade. – Meghan Daum
I have a distinct memory, dating back to 1989 or so, of sitting around with my college dorm mates talking about a new term that was popping up everywhere: ‘political correctness.’ – Meghan Daum
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. – Meghan Daum
L.A. is a constellation of microclimates and microcosms, a library with dozens of special collections. A 20-minute drive can bring a temperature change of 15 degrees. Crossing an intersection can feel like crossing a national border. – Meghan Daum
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. – Meghan Daum
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. – Meghan Daum
In about an 18-month period, my mother got sick and died, and then I had a freak illness less than a year later and almost died myself. And I found in both of those situations that there was this expectation to have a kind of transformative experience. – Meghan Daum
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. – Meghan Daum
