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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 9afbb22 | Lee Mellon told me that he was born in Meridian, Mississippi, and grew up in Florida, Virginia, and North Carolina, 'Near Asheville,' he said. 'That's Thomas Wolfe country.' 'Yeah,' I said. Lee Mellon didn't have any Southern accent. 'You don't have much of a Southern accent,' I said. 'That's right, Jesse. I read a lot of Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kant when I was a kid,' Lee Mellon said. I guess in some strange way that was supposed to ge.. | Richard Brautigan | ||
| 92bcf01 | When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him. | Eudora Welty | ||
| 22bc275 | But happiness, Albert knew, is something that appears to you suddenly, that is meant for you, a thing which you reach for and pick up and hide at your breast, a shiny thing that reminds you of something alive and leaping. | Eudora Welty | ||
| da823f6 | The challenge to writers today, I think, is not to disown any part of our heritage. Whatever our theme in writing, it is old and tried. Whatever our place, it has been visited by the stranger, it will never be new again. It is only the vision that can be new; but that is enough. | writing | Eudora Welty | |
| 7b04109 | It is well known that involuntary migrants, no matter what pot they are thrown into, tend not to melt. | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 8a4d179 | The Procrustean bed. . .suggests itself with dispiriting aptness as a metaphor for the Culture Wars, right down to the blandishments with which Procrustes must have lured his guests over the threshold. (I picture him as a handsome fellow with a large vocabulary and an oleaginous tongue, not unlike the chairmen of many English departments.) There's just one crucial difference. Sometimes Procrustes lopped off his victims, and sometimes he str.. | culture-wars political-correctness procrustes | Anne Fadiman | |
| eb90b9d | One of the strongest motivations for rereading is purely selfish: it helps you remember what you used to be like. Open an old paperback, spangled with marginalia in a handwriting you outgrew long ago, and memories will jump out with as much vigor as if you'd opened your old diary. These book-memories, says Hazlitt, are "pegs and loops on which we can hang up, or from which we can take down, at pleasure, the wardrobe of a moral imagination, .. | rereading | Anne Fadiman | |
| 9ca4a97 | Timothy Dunnigan: The kinds of metaphorical language that we use to describe the Hmong say far more about us, and our attachment to our own frame of reference, than they do about the Hmong. | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 377087e | believed in carnal love. To us, a book's words were holy, but the paper, cloth, cardboard, glue, thread, and ink that contained them were a mere vessel, and it was no sacrilege to treat them as wantonly as desire and pragmatism dictated. Hard use was a sign not of disrespect but of intimacy. | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 8380e37 | His books commingled democratically, united under the all-inclusive flag of Literature. Some were vertical, some horizontal, and some actually placed behind others. Mine were balkanized by nationality and subject matter. | humor | Anne Fadiman | |
| 9f75b49 | I have always felt that the action most worth watching is not at the center of things but where edges meet. | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 6cb3c03 | As he leans over to kiss me good night, I do not regret having graduated from the amorous sprints of our youths. Marriage is a long-distance course, and reading aloud is a kind of romantic Gatorade formulated to invigorate the occasionally exhausted racers. | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 8c8805e | You go from the north of Laos and then you go across the Mekong, and when the Pathet Lao soldiers fire, you do not think about your family, just yourself only. When you are on the other side, you will not be like what you were before ou get through the Mekong. On the other side you cannot say to your wife, I love you more than my life. She saw! You cannot say that anymore! And when you try to restick this thing together is is like putting g.. | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 5909d1a | The shells] do not have the meaning they once did, but, as Swann said in Remembrance of Things Past, "even when one is no longer attached to things, it's still something to have been attached to them." (22)" | Anne Fadiman | ||
| f395cf8 | Cultural humility" acknowledges that doctors bring the baggage of their own cultures--their own ethnic backgrounds along with the culture of medicine--to the patient's bedside, and that these may not necessarily be superior." | Anne Fadiman | ||
| 51de36e | The idea that we must choose between the method of "winning hearts and minds" and the method of shaping behavior presumes that we have the right to choose at all. This is to grant us a right that we would surely accord to no other power. Yet the overwhelming body of American scholarship accords us this right." | imperialism vietnam-war | Noam Chomsky | |
| daf87c6 | The advertising industry's prime task is to ensure that uninformed consumers make irrational choices, thus undermining market theories that are based on just the opposite. | political-science | Noam Chomsky | |
| 4b1f12e | Corporations with their political allies are waging an unrelenting class war against working people. | classism corporatocracy | Noam Chomsky | |
| 90023d5 | At the scene of a murder] The cats' bloodthirst was normal; it was the way God had made them. They were hunters, they killed for food and to train their young--well maybe sometimes for sport. But this violent act by some unknown human had nothing to do with hunting--for a human to brutally maim one of the own kind out of rage or sadism or greed was, to Joe and Dulcie (the cats), a shocking degradation of the human condition. To imagine that.. | ethics human-condition morals murder | Shirley Rousseau Murphy | |
| 59f0166 | The way we react to the Indian will always remain this nation's unique moral headache. It may seem a smaller problem than our Negro one, and less important, but many other sections of the world have had to grapple with slavery and its consequences. There's no parallel for our treatment of the Indian. In Tasmania the English settlers solved the matter neatly by killing off every single Tasmanian, bagging the last one as late as 1910. Austral.. | James A. Michener | ||
| eb88946 | It was his opinion that a man had to wait until he was dead to know the meaning of God, unless he happened to have known the sea in his youth. | James A. Michener | ||
| 390d1a9 | I have often been mildly amused when I think that the great American novel was not written about New England or Chicago. It was written about a white whale in the South Pacific. | writting | James A. Michener | |
| b8e68ca | In these centuries when God,...was forging a Christian church so that it might fulfill the longing of a hungry world, He was at the same time perfecting His first religion, Judaism, so that it might stand as the permanent norm against which to judge all others. Whenever, in the future some new religion strayed too far from the basic precepts of Judaism, God could be assured that it was in error; so in the Galilee, His ancient cauldron of fa.. | James A. Michener | ||
| ac23f15 | A ship, like a human being, moves best when it is slightly athwart the wind, when it has to keep its sails tight and attend its course. Ships, like men, do poorly when the wind is directly behind, pushing them sloppily on their way so that no care is required in steering or in the management of sails; the wind seems favorable, for it blows in the direction one is heading, but actually it is destructive because it induces a relaxation in ten.. | James A. Michener | ||
| 9782378 | At times, working in big cities far from nature, I have been sick with nesomania, and I think the reason is this: On the islands one has both the time and the inclination to communicate with the stars and the trees and the waves drifting ashore, one lives more intensely. | writing | James A. Michener | |
| 5c82ee9 | It took her three seconds-one, two, three-to know that her destiny required her to join this man, and his gun and his wagon, and his waiting horses. She had no conception of what was being asked of her, but she knew that there could be no viable alternative. She dashed inside the orphanage and grabbed the few things that belonged to her. | elly-zahm pioneers | James A. Michener | |
| a9a131f | Lee, I'm not good enough for him." "Now, what do you mean by that?" "I'm not being funny. He doesn't think about me. He's made someone up, and it's like he put my skin on her. I'm not like that--not like the made-up one." "What's she like?" "Pure!" said Abra. "Just absolutely pure. Nothing but pure--never a bad thing. I'm not like that." "Nobody is," said Lee. "He doesn't know me. He doesn't even want to know me. He wants that--white--ghost.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| f52f5f3 | For it is said that humans are never satisfied, that you give them one thing and they want something more. And this is said in disparagement, whereas it is one of the greatest talents the species has and one that has made it superior to animals that are satisfied with what they have. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 9630a84 | Laughter comes later, like wisdom teeth, and laughter at yourself comes last of all in a mad race with death, and sometimes it isn't in time. | John Steinbeck | ||
| c5e6cce | They was this rich fella, an he makes like he's poor, an they's this rich girl, an she purtends like she's poor too, an' they meet in a hamburg' stan' Why? I don't know why-that's how it was. Why'd they purtend like they's poor? Well, they're tired of bein' rich. Horseshit! You want to hear this, or not? Well, go on then. Sure, I wanta hear it, but if I was rich, if I was rich I'd get so many pork chops-I'd cord 'em up aroun' me like wood, .. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 8609c60 | Go through the motions, Adam." "What motions?" "Act out being alive, like a play. And after a while, a long while, it will be true." | John Steinbeck | ||
| c195e83 | Do you believe that a man in need can call soundlessly to another?" "Perhaps, my lord. It has happened to me that thinking of a friend and meeting him are connected. But does thinking draw him or his coming draw the thought?" | John Steinbeck | ||
| 1b18d54 | When our food and clothing and housing all are born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get into our thinking and to eliminate all other thinking. | John Steinbeck | ||
| a56e0a1 | Perhaps it is so with everyone, that he looks for weakness in the strong to find promise of strength in his weakness. | John Steinbeck | ||
| bf6deed | It has always seemed strange to me," said Doc. "The things we admire in men, kindness and generosity, openness, honesty, understanding and feeling are the concomitants of failure in our system. And those traits we detest, sharpness, greed, acquisitiveness, meanness, egotism and self-interest are the traits of success. And while men admire the quality of the first they love the produce of the second." | John Steinbeck | ||
| aad4c24 | The wedding was in Monterey, a sombre boding ceremony in a little Protestant chapel. The church had so often seen two ripe bodies die by the process of marriage that it seemed to celebrate a mystic double death with its ritual. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 48487c4 | You can't make a race horse of a pig." "No," said Samuel, "but you can make a very fast pig." | John Steinbeck | ||
| 5936b00 | They walked side by side along the dark beach toward Monterey, where the lights hung, necklace above necklace against the hill. The sand dunes crouched along the back of the beach like tired hounds, resting: and the waves gently practiced at striking, and hissed a little. The night was cold and aloof, and its warm life was withdrawn, so that it was full of bitter warnings to man that he is alone in the world, and alone among his fellows; th.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 3c17678 | A man with a beard, ordering a beer milk shake in a town where he wasn't known--they might call the police. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 7f1aa00 | A reputation for money is almost as negotiable as money itself. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 6984399 | Pa said, "Won't you say a few words? Ain't none of our folks ever been buried without a few words." Connie led Rose of Sharon to the graveside, she reluctant. "You got to," Connie said. "It ain't decent not to. It'll jus' be a little. The firelight fell on the grouped people, showing their faces and their eyes, dwindling on their dark clothes.All the hats were off now. The light danced, jerking over the people. Casy said, It'll be a shor.. | death funeral last-words life | John Steinbeck | |
| b6b0964 | You're not clever. You don't know what you want. You have no proper fierceness. You let other people walk over you. Sometimes I think you're a weakling who will never amount to a dog turd. Does that answer your question? I love you better. I always have. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 53bd1db | Nearly everyone has his box of secret pain, shared with no one. Will had concealed his well, laughed loud, exploited perverse virtues, and never let his jealousy go wandering. He thought of himself as slow, doltish, conservative, uninspired. No great dream lifted him high and no despair forced self destruction. He was always on the edge, trying to hold on to the rim of the family with what gifts he had--care, and reason, application. He kep.. | John Steinbeck | ||
| 91246fa | New York November 10, 1958 Dear Thom: We had your letter this morning. I will answer it from my point of view and of course Elaine will from hers. First--if you are in love--that's a good thing--that's about the best thing that can happen to anyone. Don't let anyone make it small or light to you. Second--There are several kinds of love. One is a selfish, mean, grasping, egotistical thing which uses love for self-importance. This is the ugly.. | John Steinbeck |