Kluger Quotes & Sayings

Ambition is an expensive impulse, one that requires an enormous investment of emotional capital. Like any investment, it can pay off in countless different kinds of coin. — Jeffrey Kluger

Vaccines save lives; fear endangers them. It's a simple message parents need to keep hearing. — Jeffrey Kluger

Kids are anarchy writ large. — Jeffrey Kluger

We make families of our own, Travis whispered in my arms on the last night we spent together. It starts with you and me and then it spreads. And whatever happens, there'll always be a part of me that's part of you. No matter what. — Steve Kluger

The only thing I know about Moses is him coming down from the mountain with the commandments and saying 'The good news is I got him down to 10. The bad news is adultery is still in. — Steve Kluger

If you're an older sibling and you have a younger sibling who needs mentoring or is afraid of the dark, you develop nurturing and empathic skills that you wouldn't otherwise have. — Jeffrey Kluger

Ale Perez I can't imagine why anyone would choose to be male. It's just so unsubtle. Women only have to deal with breasts, which are what they are. They don't suddenly stand up whenever they feel like it and begin pointing at something they want.

Augie Hwong You SO don't know what you're missing. — Steve Kluger

T.C.: Um, actually you just said "I live in a parking lot." You didn't mean to do that.
Lori: You've never seen traffic on Concord Street at eight o'clock in the morning. — Steve Kluger

In class I was out of place because I could so easily be distracted from concepts by metaphors and facts. Clearly, I was less intelligent than I had hoped, and I felt frustrated by an inarticulate notion that something was wrong if old material was processed as if the immediate past and the uncertain future had no bearing on it. — Ruth Kluger

Just because you discover that you may like somebody after all, it doesn't necessarily mean there's any attraction. — Steve Kluger

Operating-room errors hold a special terror for patients, if only because they seem like the most avoidable kind of complications. The occasional horror stories of patients who have the wrong leg removed or the wrong knee replaced generate the most headlines, as do tales of patients whose identities are mixed up entirely. — Jeffrey Kluger

It's not just the people we love, but the people we let love us back who show us how high we can really soar. — Steve Kluger

A child gets vaccinated and soon after, autism symptoms emerge. The apparent cause-and-effect is understandable but erroneous - more a coincidence of the calendar and childhood developmental stages than anything else, as repeated and exhaustive studies have shown. — Jeffrey Kluger

Hucky was so dazzled by the view of the colored lights from Forty-seventh Street, he could only manage to ask me two questions: (1) "doesn't it look like Christmas?" and (2) "Why is that man peeing on the street?" So I told him (1) "Yes," and (2) "Because that's the way they do it in New York. But you have to have a license first." I had to lie through my teeth about the last part because I'd already jumped ahead to what he was planning when we got out of the cab. — Steve Kluger

We're learning how important it is both to preserve sibling relationships if they work and repair them if they're broken. We're also learning a lot about nonliteral siblings - stepsiblings, half-siblings - and the surprising power they can have. — Jeffrey Kluger

Introverts listen better, they assess risks more carefully, they can be wiser managers. It's not for nothing that the Silicon Valley billionaires are so often the retiring types. — Jeffrey Kluger

Since narcissism is fueled by a greater need to be admired than to be liked, psychologists might use that fact as a therapeutic lever - stressing to patients that being known as a narcissist will actually cause them to lose the respect and social status they crave. — Jeffrey Kluger

The most decisive and certainly most delicious option for an aggrieved worker in a narcissist's office is simply quitting. Slamming your resignation letter on the boss's desk and striding out to take a better job somewhere else is satisfying and in both its finality and its totality. Instantly the feared figure is stripped of all power, reduced to a person of utter inconsequence in your life. Not only does this spell immediate freedom for the exiting employee, it can also contribute to the long-term decline of the boss. — Jeffrey Kluger

Odds are you know some narcissists. Odds are they're smart, confident and articulate. They make you laugh, they make you think; the first time you met, they probably charmed the pants off of you - perhaps even literally. The odds are also that that spell didn't last. — Jeffrey Kluger

Pitbull is great with brands. Endorsements with hip-hop artists work because hip-hop artists typically set the most trends ... It's every brand's goal to be seen in the mainstream, and hip-hop music has become mainstream music. — Adam Kluger

There aren't a lot of ironclad rules of family life, but here's one: No matter how much your parents deny it - and here's betting they deny it a lot - they have a favorite child. And if you're a parent, so do you. — Jeffrey Kluger

Marketers have long known that a name can make all the difference when you're trying to move the merch. The kiwifruit was once the Chinese gooseberry, after all - at least until the produce peddlers wised up - and the Chilean sea bass was once the singularly unappetizing Patagonian toothfish. — Jeffrey Kluger

A jellyfish is little more than a pulsating bell, a tassel of trailing tentacles and a single digestive opening through which it both eats and excretes - as regrettable an example of economy of design as ever was. — Jeffrey Kluger

Psychopaths know the technical difference between right and wrong - which is one of the reasons their insanity pleas in criminal cases so rarely succeed; they just fail to act on that knowledge. — Jeffrey Kluger

When you're your parents' one shot at a genetic legacy, you may get to attend all the best schools, wear all the best clothes and eat all the best foods - at least relative to children in multiple-sibling households. But you also wind up with an overweening sense of your own importance. — Jeffrey Kluger

There may be no more-radioactive term in the English language than what we now almost always refer to as the 'n-word' - itself a coy means of linguistic sidestepping that is a sign of how perilous it is to utter the thing in full, even in conversations about language. — Jeffrey Kluger

As the National Football League and other pro sports increasingly reckon with the early dementia, mental health issues, suicides and even criminal behavior of former players, the risk of what's known as chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), is becoming clear. — Jeffrey Kluger

Remember where you're standing when the spotlight goes off," Lovell warned me once, when our book was a best-seller and the movie it spawned was in theatres. "You'll have to find your own way off the stage. — Jeffrey Kluger

A close family member once offered his opinion that I exhibit the phone manners of a goat, then promptly withdrew the charge - out of fairness to goats. — Jeffrey Kluger

Why do guys insist on wearing those odious jeans with their rear ends hanging down around their ankles? Do they really think it's hot? — Steve Kluger

Some of the most rewarding times my brothers and I have are when all of us get together, and we can see what we've been building genetically and culturally. — Jeffrey Kluger

There's a sort of sibling moratorium when you're establishing yourself as an adult. So much of your energy has to be focused on other things like work and kids. But when people become more settled, siblings tend to regroup because now you're building a new extended family. — Jeffrey Kluger

TRAVIS: I never said I like boys!
GORDO: Ever beat off to Penthouse?
TRAVIS: No.
GORDO: Ever collect baseball cards?
TRAVIS: No.
GORDO: How old is Barbra Streisand?
TRAVIS: 36. Three weeks ago.
GORDO:What do you need - a fucking blueprint? — Steve Kluger

My waist is a 30. The jeans are a 28. When I fart, the Reeboks blow off. — Steve Kluger

Certainly, people can get along without siblings. Single children do, and there are people who have irreparably estranged relationships with their siblings who live full and satisfying lives, but to have siblings and not make the most of that resource is squandering one of the greatest interpersonal resources you'll ever have. — Jeffrey Kluger

Why are some people born with a fire in the belly, while others need something to get their pilot light lit? — Jeffrey Kluger

There are popular celebrities, there are unpopular celebrities and then there are the walking dead. You know the walking dead when you see them: they look like Mel Gibson, still striving for drunken charm in an L.A. County mug shot, after getting picked up on a DWI charge that included anti-semitic slurs directed at the police. — Jeffrey Kluger

Never mind what you've heard. Halle Berry was not the first black woman to win an Academy Award for Best Actress. She was actually the 74th white one. And never mind all this talk about America electing its first black President; Barack Obama is actually the 44th white man to hold the job. — Jeffrey Kluger

A fishnet is made up of a lot more holes than strings, but you can't therefore argue that the net doesn't exist. Just ask the fish. — Jeffrey Kluger

For years now, Chinese parents and teachers have lamented what's known as the 'xiao huangdi' - or little emperor - phenomenon, a generation of pampered and entitled children who believe they sit at the center of the social universe because that's exactly how they've been treated. — Jeffrey Kluger

In both children and adults, there can be a hard-to-deny link between a robust sense of hope and either work productivity or academic achievement. — Jeffrey Kluger

What makes spinal-cord injuries as devastating as they are is that everything about them plays out in absolutes: they are instantaneous, utterly disabling and horribly permanent. — Jeffrey Kluger

Spending $1 for a brand new house would feel very, very good. Spending $1,000 for a ham sandwich would feel very, very bad. Spending $19,000 for a small family car would feel, well, more or less right. But as with physical pain, fiscal pain can depend on the individual, and everyone has a different threshold. — Jeffrey Kluger

As with real reading, the ability to comprehend subtlety and complexity comes only with time and a lot of experience. If you don't adequately acquire those skills, moving out into the real world of real people can actually become quite scary. — Jeffrey Kluger

The mind of the polyglot is a very particular thing, and scientists are only beginning to look closely at how acquiring a second language influences learning, behavior and the very structure of the brain itself. — Jeffrey Kluger

Communicating with the federal government is like talking to a computer that's crashing. — Steve Kluger

Science has yet to isolate the Godiva Chocolate or Prada gene, but that doesn't mean your weakness for pricey swag isn't woven into your DNA. According to a new study of identical twins, it's less TV ads or Labor Day sales that make you buy the things you do than the tastes and temperaments that are already part of you at birth. — Jeffrey Kluger

Here's to us. Who's like us? Damn few. — Steve Kluger

If I weren't so depressed, I'd kill myself. — Steve Kluger

It's not mere extremism that makes folks at the fringes so troubling; it's extremism wedded to false beliefs. Humans have long been dupes, easily gulled by rumors and flat-out lies. — Jeffrey Kluger

Overspending is as certain a part of the holiday season as overeating. But pushing away from both the table and the cash register at least a little bit sooner can make the post-holiday hangover hurt a little bit less. — Jeffrey Kluger

The truth, of course, is that the only necessary and sufficient condition for human beings to murder one another is the simple fact of being human. — Jeffrey Kluger

Credit or debit cards, for starters, are nothing short of shoppers' Novocain. Even in the age of digital purchases and virtual money, we still attach a special value to dirty paper with pictures of presidents on it. Handing some of that to a cashier simply hurts more than handing over a little sliver of plastic. — Jeffrey Kluger

Ale: Are you manipulating me again? T.C.: Try not to fall for it. I dare you. — Steve Kluger

Older siblings get more total-immersion mentoring with their parents before younger siblings come along. As a result, they get an IQ and linguistic advantage because they are the exclusive focus of their parents' attention. — Jeffrey Kluger

I could be proud to have survived what some have called the asshole of creation, proud that it held me and couldn't keep me. But it is dangerous nonsense to believe that anyone contributed much to her own survival. — Ruth Kluger

Kids whose puberty begins too soon face not just psychological risks, but physical ones too, with an increased likelihood of cancer, as well as skeletal changes that could prevent them from attaining their full adult height. — Jeffrey Kluger

Jellyfish serve as a model for bioengineers for the same reason yeast were once so valuable to geneticists: they're simple to deconstruct. — Jeffrey Kluger

Toxins love to get you while you're young. Lead, mercury, secondhand smoke and sundry other environmental nasties do a lot more damage when tissue is immature, vulnerable and growing than when it's mature and comparatively fixed. — Jeffrey Kluger

Scarily, football helmets, which do a fine job of protecting against scalp laceration and skull fracture, do little to prevent concussions and may even exacerbate them, since even as the brain is rattling around inside the skull, the head is rattling around inside the helmet. — Jeffrey Kluger

Indeed, the best way to think of willpower is not as some shapeless behavioral trait but as a sort of psychic muscle, one that can atrophy or grow stronger depending on how it's used. — Jeffrey Kluger

No one ever pretended that shopping for anything is a rational experience. If it were, would there be Fluffernutter? Laceless sneakers? Porkpie hats? Would the Chia Pet even exist? — Jeffrey Kluger

Is there anything sadder than the foods of the 1950s? Canned, frozen, packaged concoctions, served up by the plateful, three meals per day, in an era in which the supermarket was king, the farmer's market was, well, for farmers, and the word 'locavore' sounded vaguely like a mythical beast. — Jeffrey Kluger

What people fear most about tragedy is its randomness - a taxi cab jumps the curb and hits a pedestrian, a gun misfires and kills a bystander. Better to have some rational cause and effect between incident and injury. And if cause and effect aren't possible, better that there at least be some reward for all the suffering. — Jeffrey Kluger

I attended a post-college program in L.A. for Music Business and Production. Took several courses involving Music Production, Arrangement, and Songwriting. — Adam Kluger

What do you mean Taurus? he frowns. I'm not a Taurus.

You were born on the cusp, I remind him. Jason merely shrugs.

Shows what you know, Scotty, I was born in Ohio.

I can take him anywhere but out. — Steve Kluger

There's no one place a virus goes to die - but that doesn't make its demise any less a public health victory. Throughout human history, viral diseases have had their way with us, and for just as long, we have hunted them down and done our best to wipe them out. — Jeffrey Kluger

There are a lot of obstacles in the way of our understanding animal intelligence - not the least being that we can't even agree whether nonhuman species are conscious. We accept that chimps and dolphins experience awareness; we like to think dogs and cats do. But what about mice and newts? What about a fly? Is anything going on there at all? — Jeffrey Kluger

There's no such thing as downtime for your brain. — Jeffrey Kluger

Part-black generally means all-black in Americans' minds. Just as part-Asian or part-Hispanic or part-anything-else usually puts individuals in those minority-groups' camps. — Jeffrey Kluger

Identical twins are ideal lab specimens for studying the difference between learned and inherited traits since they come from the womb preloaded with matching genetic operating systems. Any meaningful differences in their behaviors or personalities are thus likely to have been acquired, not innate. — Jeffrey Kluger

Suffering is always hard to quantify - especially when the pain is caused by as cruel a disease as Alzheimer's. Most illnesses attack the body; Alzheimer's destroys the mind - and in the process, annihilates the very self. — Jeffrey Kluger

The the Shoah involved millions of people, it was a unique experience for each of them. — Ruth Kluger

A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes. — Steve Kluger

Falling hard for somebody makes you do things you never thought you'd do before. Like pulling off an A in History or finally facing the truth about yourself — Steve Kluger

The death camps seem easier to comprehend if we put them all into the basket of one vast generalization, which the term "death camps" implies, but in the process we mythologize or trivialize them. — Ruth Kluger

From the time we're born, our brothers and sisters are our collaborators and coconspirators, our role models and our cautionary tales, — Jeffrey Kluger

Well, I think of the folks who are the climate deniers as the flat Earthers and the people who say the moon landings never happened. — Jeffrey Kluger

Becoming food savvy is one thing, but it's amazing how fast savvy turns to snooty, and snooty leaves you preparing three-hour meals that break your budget and that the kids won't even eat. — Jeffrey Kluger

Like there's actually a need for Greenland. You can get ice at 7-Eleven. — Steve Kluger

I was born in the U.S., my wife was born in Mexico and emigrated here when she was in college, and my daughters were born in New York City. That makes them passport-carrying, natural-born, eligible-to-run-for-president Americans. But they're also Mexicans and they like that just fine. — Jeffrey Kluger

Sadoway does more than entertain; he gives you a glimpse into the future of energy. — Jeffrey Kluger

You got a boyfriend or something?"
I hate it when he figures me out before I have a chance to do it myself.
Especially when I've been counting on at least seven more years of denial. — Steve Kluger

Never, ever stop believing in magic, no matter how old you get. Because if you keep looking long enough and don't give up, sooner or later you're going to find Mary Poppins. — Steve Kluger

When it comes to raising civilized kids there are no hard rules, but there are two things on which most parents agree: Boys are generally wilder than girls, and adolescents are wilder than kids of any other age. If you've got an adolescent boy, you're in the sweet spot for trouble. — Jeffrey Kluger

Everybody loves to spend money at least some of the time - because everybody loves the stuff you can buy with it. The key to the pleasure level of any transaction is the balance between the pain of the payment and the reward of the purchased object. — Jeffrey Kluger

Oh, no. This has "marriage" written all over it. Travis, read my lips: remember that Fellini film with the prostitute who says that every new sunrise makes her a virgin? It doesn't work that way with me. Even the sun thinks I'm a slut. — Steve Kluger

We pride ourselves on being the only species that understands the concept of risk, yet we have a confounding habit of worrying about mere possibilities while ignoring probabilities, building barricades against perceived dangers while leaving ourselves exposed to real ones. — Jeffrey Kluger

The best thing about science is that hard, empirical answers are always there if you look hard enough. The best thing about religion is that the very absence of that certainty is what requires - and gives rise to - deep feelings of faith. — Jeffrey Kluger

Photography is about freezing a moment in time; McGinley's is about freezing a stage in a lifetime. — Jeffrey Kluger

When T falls in love, he does it with the whole world at once. — Steve Kluger

Marriage is a lot of things - a source of love, security, the joy of children, but it's also an interpersonal battlefield, and it's not hard to see why: Take two disparate people, toss them together in often-confined quarters, add the stresses of money and kids - now lather, rinse, repeat for the rest of your natural life. What could go wrong? — Jeffrey Kluger

The families of many athletes - incensed at the sports leagues and hoping to make games safer overall - are increasingly making the brains of players who die prematurely and suspiciously available for study. Some athletes are even making the bequest themselves. — Jeffrey Kluger

Spare a thought for the poor introverts among us. In a world of party animals and glad-handers, they're the ones who stand by the punch bowl. In a world of mixers and pub crawls, they prefer to stay home with a book. Everywhere around them, cell phones ring and e-mails chime and they just want a little quiet. — Jeffrey Kluger

There's a deep-freeze of sorts for all good intentions - a place that you store your plans to make changes in your life when you know you're not going to make them at all. — Jeffrey Kluger

It's a deep and all but certain truth about narcissistic personalities that to meet them is to love them, but to know them well is to find them unbearable. Confidence quickly curdles into arrogance; smarts turn to smugness, charm turns to smarm. — Jeffrey Kluger

Humans are crude linguists from the moment of birth - and perhaps even in the womb - to the extent at least that we can hear spoken sounds and begin to recognize different combinations of language sounds. — Jeffrey Kluger

Wars, and hence the memories of wars, are owned by the male species. And facism is a decidely male property, whether you were for or against it. Besides, women have no past, or aren't supposed to have one. A man can have an interesting past, a woman only indecent. — Ruth Kluger

Now, the scene you just saw," I began, pointing to the stage.
"Was about you and T.C.," he concluded, nodding like he already knew.
"What??"
"She pretends she doesn't like him and he pretends he doesn't care."
I had no handy rebuttal to that particular allegation and wouldn't have been able to come up with one if I'd been given a week's notice. So I countered with the only safe reply I could think of.
"The toilet is not working properly. — Steve Kluger

Even though I didn't notice it while it was happening, I got reminded in ninth grade of a few things I guess I should have known all along.
1. A first kiss after five months means more than a first kiss after five minutes.
2. Always remember what it was like to be six.
3. Never, ever stop believing in magic, no matter how old you get. Because if you keep looking long enough and don't give up, sooner or later you're going to find Mary Poppins. And if you're reall lucky, maybe even a purple balloon. — Steve Kluger