Defining Empty Sums

Famous quotes containing the words defining, empty and/or sums:

    “The U.S. is becoming an increasingly fatherless society. A generation ago, an American child could reasonably expect to grow up with his or her father. Today an American child can reasonably expect not to. Fatherlessness is now approaching a rough parity with fatherhood as a defining feature of American childhood.”
    —David Blankenhorn (20th century)

    “It is difficult to read. The page is dark.
    Yet he knows what it is that he expects.
    The page is blank or a frame without a glass
    Or a glass that is empty when he looks.”
    —Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)

    “If God lived on earth, people would break his windows.”
    —Jewish proverb, quoted in Claud Cockburn, Cockburn Sums Up, epigraph (1981)