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| Link | Quote | Stars | Tags | Author |
| 2761134 | I once considered suing Farrah Fawcett for invasion of privacy. Hardly a day passed when I didn't see her on a magazine cover, an ad, a poster. She was destroying my life, but now she's OK. | David Sedaris | ||
| c316ff3 | The word love was replaced by a heart shape I'm guessing they'll put on the typewriter keyboard any day now, right beside the exclamation point. | David Sedaris | ||
| fb40f93 | After a year, you realize it takes time to rail against injustice, time you might better spend questioning fondue or describing those ferrets you couldn't afford. Unless, of course, social injustice is you thing, in which case- knock yourself out. The point is to find out who you are and to be true to that person. Because so often you can't. Won't people turn away if they know the real me? you wonder. | David Sedaris | ||
| 4f3bcb4 | Randall, the gay alcoholic in the house next door, boldly peeps through my windows. 'Boy, you sure rock in that chair a lot,' he said last week, his face pressed against my screen. This time I was lying on my bed with Katherine's cats. I'm watching them while she's out of town. I can be very mushy, and he watched me kissing them and saying that all the other cats in the neighborhood were jealous of their beauty. | David Sedaris | ||
| 6a7c418 | He spends a lot of time telling you how smart he is, which is odd because, if you're truly all that bright, people can usually figure it out on their own. | David Sedaris | ||
| cc0448d | If some people are "outed," are other people "inned"? Can we say that someone has been "besided" or "overed"?" | inned outed | David Sedaris | |
| 53dbdeb | I'm going to have you fired!" and I wanted to lean over and say, "I'm going to have you killed." | David Sedaris | ||
| 7015c69 | I was still hoping that it might be a phase, that I'd wake up the next day and be normal. In the best of times, it seemed like such a short leap. I did fantasize about having a girlfriend--never the sex part, but the rest of it I had down. I knew what she'd look like and how she'd hold her long hair back from the flame when bending over a lit candle. I imagined us getting married the summer after I graduated from college, and then I imagine.. | David Sedaris | ||
| 614cfff | The fact is that, unless we're with friends or family, we're all like talking dolls, endlessly repeating the same trite and tiresome lines: "Hello, how are you?" "Hot enough out there?" "Don't work too "hard!" I'm often misunderstood at my supermarket in Sussex, not because of my accent but because I tend to deviate from the script. Cashier: Hello, how are you this evening? Me: Has your house ever been burgled? | non-sequitur | David Sedaris | |
| e23f42c | The writers she prefers are long dead and are on the wordy side. If the novel on the sofa is 700 pages long, and the author photo is an engraving, it's either hers or Hugh's. | David Sedaris | ||
| 3e59cb7 | Neither of them had ever picked up a pen in their life, but all of a sudden they're poets, right, like that's all it takes--being in love. | David Sedaris | ||
| 3935d1b | You're not supposed to talk about your good deeds, I know. It effectively negates them and in the process makes people hate you. If there's a disaster, for instance, and someone tells me he donated five thousand dollars to the relief effort--this while I gave a lesser amount, or nothing at all--I don't think, Goodness, how bighearted you are, but, rather, Fuck you for making me look selfish. | David Sedaris | ||
| fea6cfb | We're forever blaming the airline industry for turning us into monsters: it's the fault of the ticket agents, the baggage handlers, the slowpokes at the newsstands and the fast food restaurants. But what if this is who we truly are, and the airport's just a forum that allows us to be our real selves, not just hateful but gloriously so? | David Sedaris | ||
| 9bde5d4 | One of the deadliest storm surges in American history occurred on Lake Okeechobee in Florida, in 1928, when hurricane winds blowing across the long fetch of the lake raised a storm surge that killed 1,835 people. | Erik Larson | ||
| 7dc4ef6 | THE DATE WAS APRIL 14, 1912, a sinister day in maritime history, but of course the man in suite 63-65, shelter deck C, did not yet know it. What he did know was that his foot hurt badly, more than he had expected. He was sixty-five years old and had become a large man. His hair had turned gray, his mustache nearly white, but his eyes were as blue as ever, bluer at this instant by proximity to the sea. His foot had forced him to delay the vo.. | Erik Larson | ||
| 1595ac8 | At a time when hundreds of men have been put to death without trial or any sort of evidence of guilt, and when the population literally trembles with fear, animals have rights guaranteed them which men and women cannot think of expecting. | Erik Larson | ||
| 10bddab | In this day before sonar, a submarine traveled utterly blind, trusting entirely in the accuracy of sea charts. One great fear of all U-boat men was that a half-sunk derelict or an uncharted rock might lie in their path. | Erik Larson | ||
| 73c5fda | Mrs. Caillaux bought a gun, practiced with it at the gunsmith's shop, then went to the editor's office and fired six times. In her testimony, offering an unintended metaphor for what was soon to befall Europe, she said, "These pistols are terrible things. They go off by themselves." She" | Erik Larson | ||
| 0ce9a61 | Throughout that first year in Germany, Dodd had been struck again and again by the strange indifference to atrocity that had settled over the nation, the willingness of the populace and of the moderate elements in the government to accept each new oppressive decree, each new act of violence, without protest. It | Erik Larson | ||
| a2947ae | An all-swallowing wave, not unlike a surf comber on a beach, was rushing up the boat deck, enveloping passengers, boats, and everything that lay in its path," he wrote. A mass wail rose from those it engulfed. "All the despair, terror and anguish of hundreds of souls passing into eternity composed that awful cry." | Erik Larson | ||
| d4594bf | The disaster had an important secondary effect: because two of the cruisers had stopped to help survivors of the initial attack and thus made themselves easy targets, the Admiralty issued orders forbidding large British warships from going to the aid of U-boat victims. | Erik Larson | ||
| af51939 | Another inventor, J. B. McComber, representing the Chicago-Tower Spiral-Spring Ascension and Toboggan Transportation Company, proposed a tower with a height of 8,947 feet, nearly nine times the height of the Eiffel Tower, with a base one thousand feet in diameter sunk two thousand feet into the earth. Elevated rails would lead from the top of the tower all the way to New York, Boston, Baltimore, and other cities. Visitors ready to conclude .. | Erik Larson | ||
| 13cfa41 | Stand with your back to the wind," he said, "and the barometer will be lower on your left than on your right." | Erik Larson | ||
| 7674dfa | Boswell and Thompson write, "Every night the rooms on the two upper floors of the Castle were filled to overflowing. Holmes reluctantly accommodated a few men as paying guests, but catered primarily to women--preferably young and pretty ones of apparent means, whose homes were distant from Chicago and who had no one close to them who might make inquiry if they did not soon return. Many never went home. Many, indeed, never emerged from the c.. | Erik Larson | ||
| 27504e0 | One poll found that 41 percent of those contacted believed Jews had "too much power in the United States"; another found that one-fifth wanted to "drive Jews out of the United States." (" | Erik Larson | ||
| 7f7d4a0 | Both camps maneuvered to win the endorsement of Kaiser Wilhelm, who, as the nation's supreme military leader, had the final say. He authorized U-boat commanders to sink any ship, regardless of flag or markings, if they had reason to believe it was British or French. More importantly, he gave the captains permission to do so while submerged, without warning. The most important effect of all this was to leave the determination as to which shi.. | Erik Larson | ||
| 48982dc | But Zimmermann surprised him. On Friday, March 2, during a press conference, Zimmermann himself confirmed that he had sent the telegram. "By admitting the truth," Lansing wrote, "he blundered in a most astounding manner for a man engaged in international intrigue. Of course the message itself was a stupid piece of business, but admitting it was far worse." | Erik Larson | ||
| d55ab7d | Holmes cast himself as a demanding contractor. As workers came to him for their wages, he berated them for doing shoddy work and refused to pay them, even if the work was perfect. They quit, or he fired them. He recruited others to replace them and treated these workers the same way. Construction proceeded slowly, but at a fraction of the proper cost. The high rate of turnover had the corollary benefit of keeping to a minimum the number of .. | Erik Larson | ||
| cfd971b | No sir," Dunwoody snapped. "It cannot be; no cyclone ever can move from Florida to Galveston." -- | Erik Larson | ||
| 3203b32 | And just before the heat wave, a rising young British writer had published a scalding essay on Chicago. "Having seen it," Rudyard Kipling wrote, "I desire never to see it again. It is inhabited by savages." | Erik Larson | ||
| fade12c | That you have found me ... among so many millions is the miracle of our time!" he cried. "And that I have found you, that is Germany's fortune!" | Erik Larson | ||
| 3f3ebfa | Lauriat made his first trip in 1873 on one of Cunard's earliest steamers, the Atlas. His purchases routinely made news. One acquisition, of a Bible dating to 1599, a Geneva, or "Breeches," Bible--so named because it used the word breeches to describe what Adam and Eve wore--drew nearly a full column in the New York Times." | Erik Larson | ||
| b439ab9 | A Bridgeport, Connecticut, man presented his girlfriend with an engagement ring and handed her one end of a ribbon; the other end disappeared into his pocket. "A surprise," he said, and urged her to pull it. She obliged. The ribbon was attached to the trigger of a revolver. The man died instantly." | Erik Larson | ||
| 3edd41e | Off the southeast tip of Italy a young Austrian U-boat commander named Georg von Trapp, later to gain eternal renown when played by Christopher Plummer in the film The Sound of Music, fired two torpedoes into a large French cruiser, the Leon Gambetta. The ship sank in nine minutes, killing 684 sailors. | Erik Larson | ||
| b139d23 | Wasplike with their long slender hulls, these were ships not seen in these waters before. They approached in a line, each flying a large American flag. To the hundreds of onlookers by now gathered on shore, many also carrying American flags, it would be a sight they would never forget and into which they read great meaning. These were the descendants of the colonials returning now at Britain's hour of need, the moment captured in an immedia.. | Erik Larson | ||
| 9484cf5 | The first submarine ever credited with sinking an enemy ship was the Confederate navy's H. L. Hunley, which, during the American Civil War, sank the Union navy's frigate, the Housatonic. The Hunley, propelled by a crew of eight using hand cranks to turn its propeller, approached the Housatonic after dark, carrying a large cache of explosives at the end of a thirty-foot spar jutting from its bow. The explosion destroyed the frigate; it also .. | Erik Larson | ||
| ec36fe3 | The men lived for the moment the boat ascended to the surface and the hatch in the conning tower was opened. "The first breath of fresh air, the open conning-tower hatch and the springing into life of the Diesels, after fifteen hours on the bottom, is an experience to be lived through," said another commander, Martin Niemoller." | Erik Larson | ||
| 1dde208 | Mrs. Arthur Luck of Worcester, Massachusetts, traveling with her two sons, Kenneth Luck and Elbridge Luck, ages eight and nine, to rejoin her husband, a mining engineer who awaited them in England. Why in the midst of great events there always seems to be a family so misnamed is one of the imponderables of history. | Erik Larson | ||
| 9592b65 | Indeed, these are the great lingering questions of the Lusitania affair: Why, given all the information possessed by the Admiralty about U-20; given the Admiralty's past willingness to provide escorts to inbound ships or divert them away from trouble; given that the ship carried a vital cargo of rifle ammunition and artillery shells; given that Room 40's intelligence prompted the obsessive tracking and protection of the HMS Orion; given tha.. | Erik Larson | ||
| fa4d1da | German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistance. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On" | Erik Larson | ||
| 67b5413 | Camille's rain fell with such ferocity it was said to have filled the overhead nostrils of birds and drowned them from the trees. | Erik Larson | ||
| 3782848 | The bureau had long banned the use of the word tornado because it induced panic, and panic brought criticism, something the bureau could ill afford. | Erik Larson | ||
| 5964fa1 | It's a great privilege to be permitted to share any part of your thought and confidence. It puts me in spirits again and makes me feel as if my private life had been recreated. But, better than that, it makes me hope that I may be of some use to you, to lighten the days with whole-hearted sympathy and complete understanding. That will be a happiness indeed. | Erik Larson | ||
| 0ca4aad | The dedication had been anticipated nationwide. Francis J. Bellamy, an editor of Youth's Companion, thought it would be a fine thing if on that day all the schoolchildren of America, in unison, offered something to their nation. He composed a pledge that the Bureau of Education mailed to virtually every school. As originally worded, it began, "I pledge allegiance to my Flag and to the Republic for which it stands ..." | Erik Larson |