"Memorials. A new way to be unhappy in a group. I visit a friend who can no longer speak. A few days later he's dead. If you ask after people you haven't seen for a while, be prepared"

“It would be no exaggeration to call the ’80s the decade of Crime as Entertain­ment. An epoch where fascination with ‘reality’ permeated every nook and crev­ice of television.”

Here are letters between two seven-year-old girls about the ’80s. Their names are Zoozoo and Linda and they have parents.

“Everyone hanging out on St. Marks used to look like a Dr. Seuss character. Now St. Marks looks like a movie version of St. Marks. The East Village is turning into a giant mall.”

“In the ’80s, it was ‘Morning in America’ and we woke up to find that our night­mares were real: it became the Decade of the Quick and the Dead.”

“Manners are something that will im­mediately determine what a good politi­cian is… That will go a long way to changing the world.”

“In the ’80s the only list that computes is pure megaplatinum — Prince and Bruce and U2 and Michael J. and Madonna, with maybe a few million-selling status symbols like Sting, Talking Heads, R.E.M., or Public Enemy tacked on for appearance’s sake.”

"It was the best of times, it was the best of times. Deregulation. Insider trading. Leveraged buyouts. Junk bonds. Black Monday. The country was broke, blissful­ly broke, chapter 11 broke, but it was all part of the plan. Reaganomix!"

Sixteen Writers and Artists in Search of a Decade