When it comes right down to it, developing a critical sensibility about parenting isn’t really about disapproval; it’s about honing your own sensibilities, figuring out how you want to parent. – Adam Mansbach
Look closely, and you can see where the grooves of a record widen, indicating a sparseness that can only be a bass solo, or grow denser to accommodate a cresting density of sound. – Adam Mansbach
Graffiti has an interesting relationship to the broader world of hip-hop: It’s part of the culture, but also in a weird way a stepchild of the culture. – Adam Mansbach
The city fought a $300 million, 18-year war on graffiti. New York Mayor John Lindsay declared war in 1972, and the battle for the transit system came later. – Adam Mansbach
I believe that writers have a responsibility to evolve the language, whether by introducing new words or new usages. Shakespeare alone is responsible for something like 3400 words and phrases. – Adam Mansbach
To me, ‘The End of the Jews’ – both the title and the novel itself – is about the end of pat, uncritical ways of understanding oneself in the world. – Adam Mansbach
Religious traditions are easy to lose sight of in today’s marketing frenzy. Make sure you take time to gently usher your little ones into the rituals that have special meaning for you. – Adam Mansbach
Novels are pirated all the time, but it’s hard to imagine that you’re at work and you open up the attachment that your brother sent you and it’s the new Phillip Roth novel. – Adam Mansbach
In theory, parents are supposed to empathize with one other – find common cause in the fervent desire to preserve and protect the world for the next generation, and connect on some deep, almost mystical level that those poor souls who have not experienced this kind of all-consuming love cannot possibly comprehend. – Adam Mansbach
The publishing industry stopped having new ideas out of respect for the untimely death of Ernest Hemingway in 1961 and has been doing everything the same way ever since. – Adam Mansbach
The paradox of being in an industry where other people are usually the gatekeepers: publishers, editors – there are a lot of barriers to having control over your career. But coming out of hip-hop, the mindset was always to create your own. – Adam Mansbach
Ultimately, very few people parent their kids in ways that strike anybody else as reasoned, appropriate or sane. – Adam Mansbach
Children crave routine and find listening to the same stories over and over again soothing. If you’ve grown weary of the holiday books you’ve read your kid 7,883 times, try adding ‘dude’ to the end of every line of dialogue. – Adam Mansbach
I like to read in the bathtub. Ideally, that bathtub would be located on a small Greek island. – Adam Mansbach
Vinyl is democratic, as surely as the iPod is fascist. Vinyl is representational: It has a face. Two faces, in fact, to represent the dualism of human nature. Vinyl occupies physical space honestly, proud as a fat woman dancing. – Adam Mansbach
It’s hilarious to me that by writing an obscene fake children’s book I am mistaken for a parenting expert. – Adam Mansbach
How do you sustain yourself when all the old structures people looked to for support – religion, family, ethnic solidarity – are crumbling, or feel so false that you refuse to avail yourself of them? What comes next? – Adam Mansbach
There is perhaps no better way to appreciate the dizzying stupidity of the United States than to chat with 25 consecutive morning radio hosts. – Adam Mansbach
My mother is really the person I learned to curse from. She discourages me from saying that in interviews. But it’s true. – Adam Mansbach
One of the pleasures of getting older and making a living the way you want to is that your social circle becomes rarified, and the people who enter have been vetted. – Adam Mansbach
I try to write in the mornings, as soon as I’m up and caffeinated, and to stay in the chair as long as I can be productive. – Adam Mansbach