A balance, I think, is needed , " Dr. Templeton said judiciously,"between the head and the heart: nothing easier to say: nothing harder to achieve.

First we lay out plastic bags under the leaks and cover them with towels or moving blankets. Then we put a spaghetti pot in the middle to catch the water. The trash bags are necessary because it might leak for hours in one place, then move over two inches. Mom's pièce de résistance is putting an old T-shirt inside the spaghetti pot to muffle the drip-drip-drip. Because that can drive you crazy when you are trying to sleep.

Keep your section solvent, keep your job.

And which new designers are most likely to have the right habits? The ones who have formed the right truces and found the right alliances. Truces are so important that new fashion labels usually succeed only if they are headed by people who left other fashion companies on good terms.

Much of what we acquire in life isn’t worth dragging to the next leg of ourjourney. Travel light. You will be better equipped to travel far.

Sometimes, the most practical thing to do is to think.

So at most companies, an unspoken compact emerges: It's okay to be ambitious, but if you play too rough, your peers will unite against you. On the other hand, if you focus on boosting your own department, rather than undermining your rival, you'll probably get taken care of over time.

Practicality was baked into their bones.

Eit latare, unyttigare Liv enn slike Nonnor føra, kann ein inkje godt tenkja seg

Whereas it seemed to me, back then, in the absolutism of my condition, that love had nothing to do with practicality; indeed, was its polar opposite. And the fact that it showed contempt for such banal considerations was part of its glory. Love was by its very nature disruptive, cataclysmic; and if it was not, then it was not love.