my-quotebook: “Listen, smile, agree. And then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway.” -Robert Downey, Jr.

my-quotebook:

“Listen, smile, agree. And then do whatever the fuck you were gonna do anyway.” -Robert Downey, Jr.

The Bluest Eye (1970)

Along with the idea of romantic love, she was introduced to another - physical beauty. Probably the most destructive ideas in the history of human thought. Both originated in envy, thrived in insecurity, and ended in disillusion.

TONI MORRISON

YOU GUYS. This is only the second book to make me move a hand to cover my mouth and this is significant because, if you didn’t know, I have a heart as hard as a coconut. Took me a while to get into it and when I did it ended up being one of the best I’ve ever read. Then they came upon it from a turn in the road and they stopped and stood with the salt wind blowing in their hair where they’d lowered the hoods of their coats to listen. Out there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash. He looked at the boy. He could see the disappointment in his face. I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy.

YOU GUYS. This is only the second book to make me move a hand to cover my mouth and this is significant because, if you didn’t know, I have a heart as hard as a coconut. Took me a while to get into it and when I did it ended up being one of the best I’ve ever read.

Then they came upon it from a turn in the road and they stopped and stood with the salt wind blowing in their hair where they’d lowered the hoods of their coats to listen. Out there was the gray beach with the slow combers rolling dull and leaden and the distant sound of it. Like the desolation of some alien sea breaking on the shores of a world unheard of. Out on the tidal flats lay a tanker half careened. Beyond that the ocean vast and cold and shifting heavily like a slowly heaving vat of slag and then the gray squall line of ash. He looked at the boy. He could see the disappointment in his face. I’m sorry it’s not blue, he said. That’s okay, said the boy.

Eating Animals (2009)

Each question prompts another, and it’s easy to find yourself defending a position far more extreme than you actually believe or could live by.

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER

Catcher in the Rye (1951)

I don’t want you to get the idea she was a goddam icicle or something, just because we never necked or horsed around much. She wasn’t. I held hands with her all the time, for instance. That doesn’t sound like much, I realize, but she was terrific to hold hands with. Most girls if you hold hands with them, their goddam hand dies on you, or else they think they have to keep moving their hand all the time, as if they were afraid they’d bore you or something. Jane was different. We’d get into a goddam movie or something, and right away we’d start holding hands, and we wouldn’t quit till the movie was over. And without changing the position or making a big deal out of it. You never worried with Jane, whether your hand was sweaty or not. All you knew was, you were happy. You really were.

J.D. Salinger

Seriously… I’m Kidding (2011)

To me that’s why stereotypes and labels can be so damaging. People make these sweeping generalizations and have preconceived notions of what you’re supposed to be and of who you are based on a few tiny, little words. I think it’s important to actually get to know someone before you make generalizations.

ELLEN DEGENERES

Lord of the Flies (1954)

He could see a whiteness in the gloom near him so he grabbed it from Maurice and blew as loudly as he could. The assembly was shocked into silence. Simon was close to him, laying hands on the conch. Simon felt a perilous necessity to speak; but to speak in assembly was a terrible thing to him.

“Maybe,” he said hesitantly, “maybe there is a beast.”

The assembly cried out savagely and Ralph stood up in amazement.

“You, Simon? You believe in this?”

“I don’t know,” said Simon. His heartbeats were choking him. “But…”

The storm broke.

“Sit down!”

“Shut up!”

“Take the conch!”

“Sod you!”

“Shut up!”

Ralph shouted.

“Hear him! He’s got the conch!”

“What I mean is… maybe it’s only us.”

“Nuts!”

That was from Piggy, shocked out of decorum. Simon went on.

“We could sort of…”

Simon became inarticulate in his effort to express mankind’s essential illness. Inspiration came to him.

“What’s the dirtiest thing there is?”

WILLIAM GOLDING

The best love affairs are those we never had.

—Norman Lindsay

Chivalry, from “Are Women People?” (1915)

It’s treating a woman politely
        As long as she isn’t a fright:
It’s guarding the girls who act rightly,
        If you can be judge of what’s right;
It’s being - not just, but so pleasant;
        It’s tipping while wages are low;
It’s making a beautiful present,
        And failing to pay what you owe.

ALICE DUER MILLER

Orlando (1928)

But there, sitting at the servant’s dinner table with a tankard beside him and paper in front of him, sat a rather fat, rather shabby man, whose ruff was a thought dirty, and whose clothes were of hodden brown. He held a pen in his hand, but he was not writing. He seemed in the act of rolling some thought up and down, to and fro in his mind till it gathered shape or momentum to his liking. His eyes, globed and clouded like some green stone of curious texture, were fixed. He did not see Orlando. For all his hurry, Orlando stopped dead. Was this a poet? Was he writing poetry? “Tell me,” he wanted to say, “everything in the whole world” - for he had the wildest, most absurd, extravagant ideas about poets and poetry - but how speak to a man who does not see you? who sees ogres, satyrs, perhaps the depths of the sea instead?

VIRGINIA WOOLF


MILES-APART.NET 2004-2011; FOREVER-IF 2011-2012
A work in progress; she'll be better when she's older.

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