Katz Quotes & Sayings

The closet encouraged reading. — Jonathan Ned Katz

Some people say that their pets will tell them when it's time to go. I don't believe that. No animal of mine has ever told me he was ready to die. I wish it were that simple. Dogs can communicate, but they cannot talk, nor do they think in our language or on our terms. — Jon Katz

We were received with warmth and bustling kindliness by the proprietor....She called us "you boys" and acted as if she had been expecting us for days, possibly years.
"Goodness me, just look at you boys!" she clucked in astonishment and delight. "You look as if you've been wrestling bears!"
I suppose we must have looked a sight. Katz was liberally covered in blood from his fraught stumble through the woods, and there was tiredness all over us, even in our eyes.
"Now you boys go up and get yourselves cleaned up and come down to the porch and I'll have a nice jug of iced tea waiting for you. Or would you rather lemonade? Never mind, I'll make both. Now go on!" And off she bustled.
"Thanks, Mom," we muttered in dazzled and grateful unison. — Bill Bryson

Science is a particular way of thinking about things. — Lilian Katz

Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz's Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worst had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. Depressives in grim situations handed down their genes, however despairingly, while the self-improvers converted to Christianity or moved away to sunnier locales. — Jonathan Franzen

The artist is a vessel for creativity. He has the key to the door of a very special place, which he can open at will. He doesn't paint but is painted through. — Thomas J. Katz

To declare war on ninety-nine percent of bacteria when less than percent of them threaten our health makes no sense. Many of the bacteria we're killing are our protectors. — Sandor Katz

I'm officially middle-aged. I don't need drugs anymore, thank God. I can get the same effect just by standing up real fast. — Jonathan Katz

Remember, the security and happiness you are seeking is not in your material possessions, your degrees, or relationships. It is much closer than you think. — Mabel Katz

There was a taboo as a result of the Holocaust that people respected that anti-Semitism was an ugly thing and should be avoided. Now that taboo seems to have been broken with impunity. — Steven T. Katz

It's interesting that my neighbor Irv, who saw dogs so differently, knew all the kids and people on the block and could recite the family history of each house until about a decade ago. Now few of our neighbors can name more than a handful of people who live on the street. They have little to do with local government, and vote sporadically, at best. In the evenings and on weekends, they go their own ways. Their kids are repeatedly warned about talking to people they don't know. — Jon Katz

The immature conscience is not its own master. It simply parrots the decisions of others. It does not make judgments of its own; it merely conforms to the judgments of others. That is not real freedom, and it makes true love impossible, for if we are to love truly and freely, we must be able to give something that is truly our own to another. If our heart does not belong to us, asks Merton, how can we give it to another? — Jon Katz

It's easy to see why dog rescue is a mushrooming culture. Turning a troubled person's life around is difficult, but rescuers with commitment and time and a few dollars can radically alter the fate of a dog. And there are millions of dogs - nearly 10 million in the shelter system, many others mistreated in private homes - in need of rescuing. — Jon Katz

That, even with imperfect masters, the canine soul is pure, loyal, and dependable. — Jon Katz

I hung up again and looked at Katz. What is it with this town? I've blown more intelligent life into a handkerchief. — Bill Bryson

The argument that 'boys will be boys' actually carries the profoundly anti-male implication that we should expect bad behavior from boys and men. The assumption is that they are somehow not capable of acting appropriately, or treating girls and women with respect. — Jackson Katz

Everyone has a supremely low moment somewhere along the AT, usually when the urge to quit the trail becomes almost overpowering. The irony of my moment was that I wanted to get back on the trail and didn't know how. I hadn't lost just Katz, my boon companion, but my whole sense of connectedness to the trail. I had lost my momentum, my feeling of purpose. In the most literal way I needed to find my feet again. — Bill Bryson

Actual evil probably requires much more creativity, passion, and political ideology than anyone at or near the top of Microsoft seems to possess. — Jon Katz

Abbott Labs absolutely are on the mend. You were able to buy 15 percent growth over the last five, 10 and 20 years at 13 or 14 times earnings, ... It's a great opportunity. Buy on this dip. We think a year from now the chart's going to be a mirror image on the up side. — David L. Katz

When I wrote about media and technology, I had a lot of lonely, even intimate book talks. Since writing about dogs, I have a lot of company at book signings. — Jon Katz

Part of what Im about is seeing how I can paint the same thing differently instead of different things the same way. — Alex Katz

I am not mad here, but clear and calm. I am not transformed, but allowed to be wholly myself.I am isolated, but have never felt more connected to people. I am not imprisoned, but free. I am not cut off from my family and my roots, but am brought back to them. I am not living alone with dogs, but permitting my dogs to lead me somewhere I need to go, and it has been a great trip. We have more distance to travel together, I'm sure, before we are through. — Jon Katz

The many governments within a single metropolitan area are almost designed to fight among themselves because state law makes them largely dependent on locally raised tax revenues...People, pies, cars, rails, and the nebulous entity known as the economy might flow seamlessly across local boundaries, but sales and property tax dollars rarely do. — Bruce Katz

The notion that Jews are mythic creatures is well circulating in our culture. — Steven T. Katz

Most people aren't familiar enough with what actually goes on in professional wrestling to know just how badly women are treated in WWE narratives. — Jackson Katz

Curriculum should help children make deeper and fuller understanding of their own experience — Lilian Katz

The best thing I can say is professional football is a business. When they are recruiting football players, they are not recruiting model citizens. Everybody has to be aware of this. What's being selected for the NFL is the ability to play and perform on Sunday afternoons. Everything else is secondary. — Jackson Katz

Life is life and fun is fun
and all is quiet when the goldfish dies. — Eric Andrews-Katz

When people buy, rescue, or otherwise acquire a dog from unscrupulous breeders or amateur rescue groups, they are making a decision with ethical consequences. They have a profound responsibility to consider their actions; to gauge the dog's behavior, to train it thoroughly and rigorously, to protect other humans and dogs from harm. — Jon Katz

Tarot is a lyrical language of the soul's encounter with the Universe. It arises freely, and like the most dignified dance, allows us to express ourselves in motion to the music of the divine. The re-arrangement and reading of the deck is as sacred as the most religious ritual or act of love. Treasure it. Trust it. Let it divine you. — Marcus Katz

When media coverage sets up a binary opposition between 'the accuser' and 'the accused,' there is no longer a victim or even an alleged victim - a flesh and blood person who was harmed by the violent act of another. — Jackson Katz

Paint faster than you can think. — Alex Katz

Try to find the real tense of the report you are reading: Was it done, is it being done, or is something to be done? Reports are now written in four tenses: past tense, present tense, future tense, and pretense. Watch for novel uses of CONGRAM (CONtractor GRAMmer), defined by the past imperfect, the present insufficient, and the future absolutely perfect. — Amrom Harry Katz

Dog rescue remains a gamble, of course. For all the good will, hard work, and noble motivation, nobody can really predict with certainty how a traumatized, dislocated dog will respond in a new environment. — Jon Katz

We are doing earlier and earlier to children what we shouldn't do later. — Lilian Katz

A border collie named Orson inspired me to buy a 110-acre farm with four barns and a sheep. That led to a series of books about Bedlam Farm and about dogs, rural life, lambing and herding sheep. — Jon Katz

Something fundamental about the myth of the Jew has resurfaced. — Steven T. Katz

Today, planning has become collaborative and interactive, using software and tools that will allow clients to "play" with different scenarios, becoming invested in the results. Our delivery is online, and the focus is on the process of planning, not the product (the plan). We engage as many other professionals as we need to (accountants, attorneys, and insurance agents) to complete the implementation. — Deena B. Katz

We all have an eraser incorporated within us, a delete key, but we forget how to use it. Ho'oponopono helps us to remember the power that we have to choose between erasing (letting go) or reacting, being happy or suffering. It is only a matter of choice in every moment of our lives. — Mabel Katz

... People don't live in the greater scheme of things, they live in the here and now, — Barbara Katz Rothman

Katz traces the courageous role of Black women in settling the West (and] deftly shows how these pioneering spirits helped stabilize early communities in Texas, Oklahoma, California and elsewhere. — Herb Boyd

Owners who buy aggressive dogs for security may be kidding themselves: The chances that the victim of a fatal dog attack will be a burglar or human attacker are 1-in-177. The odds that the victim will be a child are 7-in-10. — Jon Katz

Most Americans acquire dogs impulsively and for dubious reasons: as a Christmas gift for the kids. Because they saw one in a movie. To match the new living-room furniture. Because they moved to the suburbs and see a dog as part of the package. — Jon Katz

Lifetime dogs intersect with our lives with particular impact; they're dogs we love in especially powerful, sometimes inexplicable, ways. — Jon Katz

Wild foods, microbial cultures included, possess a great, unmediated life force, which can help us adapt to shifting conditions and lower our susceptibility to disease. These microorganisms are everywhere, and the techniques for fermenting with them are simple and flexible. — Sandor Katz

the quality of classroom practice that a child encounters has unmatched potential with respect to influencing student learning and achievement. What teachers are doing in classes with students on a daily basis has the greatest potential to influence the academic outcome for students, — Steven Katz

The concept of power we admire is power over someone else. — Jackson Katz

Goldin and Katz have no doubt that increased wage inequality in the United States is due to a failure to invest sufficiently in higher education. More precisely, too many people failed to receive the necessary training, in part because families could not afford the high cost of tuition. In order to reverse this trend, they conclude, the United States should invest heavily in education so that as many people as possible can attend college. — Thomas Piketty

Young children are unlikely to have their self-esteem strengthened from excessive praise or flattery. On the contrary, it may raise some doubts in children; many children can see through flattery and may even dismiss an adult who heaps on praise as a poor source of support-one who is not very believable. — Lilian Katz

Confusion over how a person's extraordinary skill is developed runs deep. The heated debate over writer Malcolm Gladwell's "10,000 hour rule," as put forth i his popular book Outliers: The Story of Success, indicates that it is not just refeerees who get tongue-tied trying to pinpoint the fundaments of their expertise. Proficiency in activities from musicianship to athletics, Gladwell contends, can be achieved only through vast amount of practice (10,000 hours was the ballpark figure he cited, applying it to the triumphs of Bill Gates and the Beatles, among others.) — Bob Katz

We go through life trying to line up the chess pieces just right, but doing so is difficult. Something is always not quite to our liking. Health may not be perfect. Finances may not be perfect. Relationships may not be perfect. — Solomon Katz

Katz had read extensively in popular sociobiology, and his understanding of the depressive personality type and its seemingly perverse persistence in the human gene pool was that depression was successful adaptation to ceaseless pain and hardship. Pessimism, feelings of worthlessness and lack of entitlement, inability to derive satisfaction from pleasure, a tormenting awareness of the world's general crappiness: for Katz Jewish paternal forebears, who'd been driven from shtetl to shtetl by implacable anti-Semites, as for the old Angles and Saxons on his mother's side, who'd labored to grow rye and barley in the poor soils and short summers of northern Europe, feeling bad all the time and expecting the worse had been natural ways of equilibriating themselves with the lousiness of their circumstances. Few things gratified depressives, after all, more than really bad news. This obviously wasn't an optimal way to live, but it had its evolutionary advantages. — Jonathan Franzen

Media play a powerful role in establishing and perpetuating social norms. — Jackson Katz

In cooperative learning, you have a purposeful, meaningful, and authentic context in which children can sharpen their communicative skills. — Lilian Katz

We need to redefine strength in men, not as the power over other people, but as forces for justice. — Jackson Katz

Our perfection lies in our imperfection. — Sandor Ellix Katz

An old tradition holds that at the Last Judgment, the non-human creatures of the earth will be called by God to "give evidence" against each human being. The idea pops up in books and stories about the Creation, deemed a myth, but a persistent, imposing, even haunting one: We will be judged by the very creatures so dependent on us.
So I treat, and will continue to treat, my animals - the dogs, cats, sheep, donkeys, chickens, and cows - with that in mind.
They will give evidence. What would I want them to say? — Jon Katz

For as long as I care to remember, religion, like the striptease, has always been a display of the power of suggestion. Like the Virgin Birth, it has all too often supported an immaculate deception. — Bernard Katz

There is no evidence that dogs have the kind of complex emotional lives and value systems that we do. It's one reason why we love them so much, in fact. They are neither "good" nor "bad." They don't hold grudges, act in petty ways, or seek revenge. They read our moods, but not our minds. — Jon Katz

Katz could see that Patty, in the seemingly random life-meanderings that Walter had just described to him, had in fact deliberately been trampling symbols in a cornfield, spelling out a message unreadable to Walter at ground level but clear as could be to Katz at great height. IT'S NOT OVER, IT'S NOT OVER. — Jonathan Franzen

... emotions are most often overwhelming when they are not your own — Debra Lynne Katz

It inspires a bit of awe to see working dogs really do their jobs, to see thousands of years of history, instinct, and breeding well up and become manifest in a sunny pasture. It transforms the way an owner sees a dog, and the way the dog sees himself. This, perhaps, is the bond people talk about between working dogs and their masters. Working — Jon Katz

Asking an angry man to change his ways is like asking a blind man to try harder to see. — Evan L. Katz

Every twenty minutes on the Appalachian Trail, Katz and I walked farther than the average American walks in a week. For 93 percent of all trips outside the home, for whatever distance or whatever purpose, Americans now get in a car. On average, the total walking of an American these days - that's walking of all types: from car to office, from office to car, around the supermarket and shopping malls - adds up to 1.4 miles a week ... That's ridiculous. — Bill Bryson

Kids leave us and go off on their own lives. Family members tell us what they think of us. Animals can't do that. They really are blank canvases, and we can project anything we want onto them. So the relationship is very pure and simple. — Jon Katz

You seeyou can beat a dog and it's going to do one of two things..it's gonna roll over and die or it's going to bite you and attack you. And I'm the kind of person..uh..whose the type of dog that will bite back..I wasn't going to roll over and die — Mike Katz

God (Love) can heal anything. Your job is to give permission. It takes a lot
of trust. — Mabel Katz

Personally, I don't want to own a dog that inspires fear. I choose my dogs carefully, have their temperaments observed and evaluated, train and socialize them day after day. Yet I know any dog can be unpredictable. — Jon Katz

Whenever I hear people clucking about the decline of civilization, what's wrong with young people, how vulgar popular culture is, how confusing and frightening they find the internet, alarms go off. I know I'm around somebody whose hinges are rusting. Death will be bad enough, but for me, this early harbinger is more fearsome, because a part of one's spirit and openness and ability to learn and grow disappears. — Jon Katz

You don't need the technical understanding to make the moral judgments. — Barbara Katz Rothman

Birth is not only about making babies. Birth is about making mothers
strong, competent, capable mothers who trust themselves and know their inner strength. — Barbara Katz Rothman

I never said I was gay - or not gay. Everyone's always telling me what I am. I just want the chance to find out for myself" Teddy — Ali Katz

Don't let pain keep you out of the garden. — Welwyn Wilton Katz

The major political battles about guns in our society concern handguns and assault weapons, not long arms like hunting rifles. — Jackson Katz

Americans have an extraordinary love-hate relationship with the rich culture they've created. They buy, watch and read it even as they ban, block and condemn it. — Jon Katz

Zachary's mother, Lucy, waylaid him on the third-floor landing and offered, unsolicited, her opinion that the Traumatics had been the kind of adolescently posturing, angst-mongering boy group that never interested her. Then she waited, with parted lips and a saucy challenge in her eyes, to see how her presence
the drama of being her
was registering. In the way of such chicks, she seemed convinced of the originality of her provocation. Katz had encountered, practically verbatim, the same provocation a hundred times before, which put him in the ridiculous position now of feeling bad for being unable to pretend to be provoked: of pitying Lucy's doughty little ego, its floatation on a sea of aging-female insecurity. He doubted he could get anywhere with her even if he felt like trying, but he knew that her pride would be hurt if he didn't make at least a token effort to be disagreeable. (p. 194) — Jonathan Franzen

Being socialized female and spending my life "othered" by this world gives me a unique perspective. In the past, this has felt like shit. In the present, it feels pretty good. In the future I hope somebody loves me enough to watch me age ungracefully. — Harvey Katz

Men are every bit as gendered as women. — Jackson Katz

Many young men in the 1960s and 1970s came to reject some of the traditional ideas about manhood that many of their fathers tried to pass down - like unquestioning respect for authority even when that might mean killing and dying for questionable or unjust causes such as the Vietnam War. — Jackson Katz

There's a vulnerability about Rose, even a sweetness in her eyes, but there's no mistaking her priorities. Smart, tough, determined, she is essential, but rarely the dog that people melt over or want to take home. Yet she's a great dog. — Jon Katz

It's important to remember that the animals are not grieving with us. They're very accepting. They're not lying there thinking 'How could you do this to me? Why aren't you keeping me going?' Pets don't do the human things of guilt and anger and recrimination that we do. They come and go with great acceptance. — Jon Katz

It's natural canine behavior to chew on all sorts of things, roll in other animals' droppings, hump and fight other dogs, menace anything that invades the home. All these behaviors can be curbed, but that takes a lot of work. Trainers say it requires nearly 2,000 repetitions of a behavior for a dog to completely absorb it. — Jon Katz

If the KKK was smart enough, they would've created gangsta rap because it's such a caricature of black culture and black masculinity. — Jackson Katz

We are human, and we suffer, and unlike the animals on the farm, we are self-aware, and we know that we suffer, and it doesn't hurt more or less if God caused it or could stop it, at least for me. I am definitely of the school that believes God has bigger stuff to worry about than me. — Jon Katz

The poet laureate of England talked about murdering Jews on the West Bank. — Steven T. Katz

Most male victims of violence are the victims of other men's violence. So that's something that both women and men have in common. We are both victims of men's violence. — Jackson Katz

I like to make an image that is so simple you can't avoid it, and so complicated you can't figure it out. — Alex Katz

Every time - well, not every time, but in celebration of a great review or a great accolade, I take the team of Daniel to Katz's Deli for lunch. We take the trip on the subway, we were like 40 or 50 people, and we go in the back room and have a pastrami sandwich. — Daniel Boulud

When you do what you love, there is nothing you need to worry about. Everything comes easily. — Mabel Katz

Animals have come to mean so much in our lives. We live in a fragmented and disconnected culture. Politics are ugly, religion is struggling, technology is stressful, and the economy is unfortunate. What's one thing that we have in our lives that we can depend on? A dog or a cat loving us unconditionally, every day, very faithfully. — Jon Katz

God waits for our permission and doesn't invade our privacy as we do with others.
Everybody has free choice. — Mabel Katz

We massively exaggerate the exotic risks we can least control and massively undervalue the mundane risks we can control. — David L. Katz

I'm always happy when people choose to get another dog because it's a healthy and healing thing to do, and there are millions of them needing homes. But there is no single time frame to do it in because grieving is an intensely personal experience. — Jon Katz

In the alternate universe of conservative talk radio, the killing of Bin Laden coincidentally happened on Barack Obama's watch. He had to be kicked dragging and screaming into authorizing it, and even then he made lots of mistakes. — Jackson Katz

If you believe people have no history
worth mentioning, it's easy to believe
they have no humanity worth defending — William Loren Katz

the basement. Katz — Bill Bryson

In Freud's theory, the wish-producing, fear-generating power of these body parts lies within them, not, with their strategic position within a historically specific, male-dominant, phallus-favoring, social organization of powers, bodies, and symbols. — Jonathan Ned Katz

Each of us must come to care about everyone else's children. We must recognize that the welfare of our children and grandchildren is intimately linked to the welfare of all other people's children. After all, when one of our children needs lifesaving surgery, someone else's child will perform it. If one of our children is threatened or harmed by violence, someone else's child will be responsible for the violent act. The good life for our own children can be secured only if a good life is also secured for all other people's children. — Lilian Katz

How many more school shootings do we need before we start talking about this as a social problem, and not merely a random collection of isolated incidents? — Jackson Katz

Dogs are not 'people' of another species. They are another species. To train and care for them properly, to show them how to live in our complex world, requires first and foremost that we understand that. — Jon Katz