Novelists from New York (state)

"When I was a boy I was tremendously interested in scarecrows. They always seemed to my childish imagination as just about to wave their arms, straighten up and stalk across the field on their long legs. I lived on a farm, you know. It was natural then that my first character in this animated life series was the scarecrow, on whom I have taken revenge for all the mystic feeling he once inspired."

"Now we can cross the Shifting Sands."

"When I was young I longed to write a great novel that should win me fame. Now that I am getting old my first book is written to amuse children. For aside from my evident inability to do anything "great," I have learned to regard fame as a will-o-the-wisp which, when caught, is not worth the possession; but to please a child is a sweet and lovely thing that warms one's heart and brings its own reward."

"The scenery and costumes of 'The Wizard of Oz' were all made in New York — Mr. Mitchell was a New York favorite, but the author was undoubtedly a Chicagoan, and therefore a legitimate butt for the shafts of criticism. So the critics highly praised the Poppy scene, the Kansas cyclone, the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, but declared the libretto was very bad and teemed with 'wild and woolly western puns and forced gags.' Now, all that I claim in the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' is the creation of the characters of the Scarecrow and the Tin Woodman, the story of their search for brains and a heart, and the scenic effects of the Poppy Field and the cyclone. These were a part of my published fairy tale, as thousands of readers well know. I have published fifteen books of fairy tales, which may be found in all prominent public and school libraries, and they are entirely free, I believe, from the broad jokes the New York critics condemn in the extravaganza, and which, the New York people are now laughing over. In my original manuscript of the play were no 'gags' nor puns whatever. But Mr. Hamlin stated positively that no stage production could succeed without that accepted brand of humor, and as I knew I was wholly incompetent to write those 'comic paper side-splitters' I employed one of the foremost New York 'tinkerers' of plays to write into my manuscript these same jokes that are now declared 'wild and woolly' and 'smacking of Chicago humor.' If the New York critics only knew it, they are praising a Chicago author for the creation of the scenic effects and characters entirely new to the stage, and condemning a well-known New York dramatist for a brand of humor that is palpably peculiar to Puck and Judge. I am amused whenever a New York reviewer attacks the libretto of 'The Wizard of Oz' because it 'comes from Chicago.'""

"It is a callous age; we have seen so many marvels that we are ashamed to marvel more; the seven wonders of the world have become seven thousand wonders."

"Some of my youthful readers are developing wonderful imaginations. This pleases me. Imagination has brought mankind through the Dark Ages to its present state of civilization. Imagination led Columbus to discover America. Imagination led Franklin to discover electricity. Imagination has given us the steam engine, the telephone, the talking-machine, and the automobile, for these things had to be dreamed of before they became realities. So I believe that dreams — day dreams, you know, with your eyes wide open and your brain machinery whizzing — are likely to lead to the betterment of the world. The imaginative child will become the imaginative man or woman most apt to create, to invent, and therefore to foster civilization. A prominent educator tells me that fairy tales are of untold value in developing imagination in the young. I believe it."

"As the years pass, and we look back on something which, at the time, seemed unbelievably discouraging and unfair, we come to realize that, after all, God was at all times on our side. The eventual outcome was, we discover, by far the best solution for us, and what we thought should have been to our best advantage, would in reality have been quite detrimental."

"The absurd and legendary devil is the enigma of the Church."

"Sitting Bull, most renowned Sioux of modern history, is dead. He was not a Chief, but without Kingly lineage he arose from a lowly position to the greatest Medicine Man of his time, by virtue of his shrewdness and daring. He was an Indian with a white man's spirit of hatred and revenge for those who had wronged him and his. In his day he saw his son and his tribe gradually driven from their possessions: forced to give up their old hunting grounds and espouse the hard working and uncongenial avocations of the whites. And these, his conquerors, were marked in their dealings with his people by selfishness, falsehood and treachery. What wonder that his wild nature, untamed by years of subjection, should still revolt? What wonder that a fiery rage still burned within his breast and that he should seek every opportunity of obtaining vengeance upon his natural enemies."

"The proud spirit of the original owners of these vast prairies inherited through centuries of fierce and bloody wars for their possession, lingered last in the bosom of Sitting Bull. With his fall the nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they die than live the miserable wretches that they are. History would forget these latter despicable beings, and speak, in later ages of the glory of these grand Kings of forest and plain that Cooper loved to heroism. We cannot honestly regret their extermination, but we at least do justice to the manly characteristics possessed, according to their lights and education, by the early Redskins of America."

"The peculiar policy of the government in employing so weak and vacillating a person as General Miles to look after the uneasy Indians, has resulted in a terrible loss of blood to our soldiers, and a battle which, at its best, is a disgrace to the war department. There has been plenty of time for prompt and decisive measures, the employment of which would have prevented this disaster. The Pioneer has before declared that our only safety depends upon the total extirmination of the Indians. Having wronged them for centuries we had better, in order to protect our civilization, follow it up by one more wrong and wipe these untamed and untamable creatures from the face of the earth. In this lies future safety for our settlers and the soldiers who are under incompetent commands. Otherwise, we may expect future years to be as full of trouble with the redskins as those have been in the past."

"An eastern contemporary, with a grain of wisdom in its wit, says that "when the whites win a fight, it is a victory, and when the Indians win it, it is a massacre.""

"His father thought he had a wond'rous wise look when he was born, and so he named him Solomon, thinking that if indeed he turned out to be wise the name would fit him nicely, whereas, should he be mistaken, and the boy grow up stupid, his name could be easily changed to Simon."

"Burglars! Good gracious!' cried the little woman, springing from the bed in one bound. The word 'burglar' was a terrible one to her, as it is indeed, to every well-constituted woman. 'Robbery' does not sound nearly so awe-inspiring."

"Make them read that it is no longer the fashion to wear birds upon hats. That will afford relief to your poor milliner and at the same time set free thousands of our darling birds who have been so cruelly used." Popopo thanked the wise king and followed his advice. The office of every newspaper and magazine in the city was visited by the knook, and then he went to other cities, until there was not a publication in the land that had not a "new fashion note" in its pages. Sometimes Popopo enchanted the types, so that whoever read the print would see only what the knook wished them to. Sometimes he called upon the busy editors and befuddled their brains until they wrote exactly what he wanted them to. Mortals seldom know how greatly they are influenced by fairies, knooks and ryls, who often put thoughts into their heads that only the wise little immortals could have conceived. The following morning when the poor milliner looked over her newspaper she was overjoyed to read that "no woman could now wear a bird upon her hat and be in style, for the newest fashion required only ribbons and laces."

""But what can I do?" cried she, spreading out her arms helplessly. "I can not hew down trees, as my father used; and in all this end of the king's domain there is nothing else to be done. For there are so many shepherds that no more are needed, and so many tillers of the soil that no more can find employment. Ah, I have tried; hut no one wants a weak girl like me." "Why don't you become a witch?" asked the man. "Me!" gasped Mary-Marie, amazed. "A witch!" "Why not?” he inquired, as if surprised. "Well," said the girl, laughing. "I'm not old enough. Witches, you know, are withered dried-up old hags." "Oh, not at all!" returned the stranger. "And they sell their souls to Satan, in return for a knowledge of witchcraft," continued Mary-Marie more seriously. "Stuff and nonsense!" cried the stranger angrily. “And all the enjoyment they get in life is riding broomsticks through the air on dark nights," declared the girl. "Well, well, well!" said the old man in an astonished tone. "One might think you knew all about witches, to hear you chatter. But your words prove you to be very ignorant of the subject. You may find good people and bad people in the world; and so, I suppose, you may find good witches and bad witches. But I must confess most of the witches I have known were very respectable, indeed, and famous for their kind actions." "Oh. I'd like to be that kind of witch!" said Mary-Marie, clasping her hands earnestly."

"But girls often marry when they are too young," exclaimed Mary-Marie quickly; "so, if you don't object to my age —"

"Folklore, legends, myths and fairy tales have followed childhood through the ages, for every healthy youngster has a wholesome and instinctive love for stories fantastic, marvelous and manifestly unreal."

"Modern education includes morality; therefore the modern child seeks only entertainment in its wonder-tales and gladly dispenses with all disagreeable incident."

"Dorothy lived in the midst of the great Kansas prairies, with Uncle Henry, who was a farmer, and Aunt Em, who was the farmer's wife."

"It was Toto that made Dorothy laugh, and saved her from growing as gray as her other surroundings. Toto was not gray; he was a little black dog, with long silky hair and small black eyes that twinkled merrily on either side of his funny, wee nose."

"You are welcome, most noble Sorceress, to the land of the Munchkins. We are so grateful to you for having killed the Wicked Witch of the East, and for setting our people free from bondage."

"Dorothy looked, and gave a little cry of fright. There, indeed, just under the corner of the great beam the house rested on, two feet were sticking out, shod in silver shoes with pointed toes."

"There were only four witches in all the Land of Oz, and two of them, those who live in the North and the South, are good witches. I know this is true, for I am one of them myself, and cannot be mistaken. Those who dwelt in the East and the West were, indeed, wicked witches; but now that you have killed one of them, there is but one Wicked Witch in all the Land of Oz — the one who lives in the West."

""The road to the City of Emeralds is paved with yellow brick," said the Witch, "so you cannot miss it. When you get to Oz do not be afraid of him, but tell your story and ask him to help you"."

"The Scarecrow listened carefully, and said, "I cannot understand why you should wish to leave this beautiful country and go back to the dry, gray place you call Kansas." "That is because you have no brains" answered the girl. "No matter how dreary and gray our homes are, we people of flesh and blood would rather live there than in any other country, be it ever so beautiful. There is no place like home." The Scarecrow sighed. "Of course I cannot understand it," he said. "If your heads were stuffed with straw, like mine, you would probably all live in the beautiful places, and then Kansas would have no people at all. It is fortunate for Kansas that you have brains.""

"It must be inconvenient to be made of flesh," said the Scarecrow thoughtfully, "for you must sleep, and eat and drink. However, you have brains, and it is worth a lot of bother to be able to think properly."

"All the same," said the Scarecrow, "I shall ask for brains instead of a heart; for a fool would not know what to do with a heart if he had one." "I shall take the heart," returned the Tin Woodman; "for brains do not make one happy, and happiness is the best thing in the world."

"There is no living thing that is not afraid when it faces danger. The true courage is in facing danger when you are afraid, and that kind of courage you have in plenty."

"All the other animals in the forest naturally expect me to be brave, for the Lion is everywhere thought to be the King of Beasts. I learned that if I roared very loudly every living thing was frightened and got out of my way. Whenever I've met a man I've been awfully scared; but I just roared at him, and he has always run away as fast as he could go. If the elephants and the tigers and the bears had ever tried to fight me, I should have run myself — I'm such a coward; but just as soon as they hear me roar they all try to get away from me, and of course I let them go."

"You will be very welcome," answered Dorothy, "for you will help to keep away the other wild beasts. It seems to me they must be more cowardly than you are if they allow you to scare them so easily." "They really are," said the Lion, "but that doesn't make me any braver, and as long as I know myself to be a coward I shall be unhappy."

"The Tin Woodman knew very well he had no heart, and therefore he took great care never to be cruel or unkind to anything. "You people with hearts," he said, "have something to guide you, and need never do wrong; but I have no heart, and so I must be very careful. When Oz gives me a heart of course I needn't mind so much.""

"One of my greatest fears was the Witches, for while I had no magical powers at all I soon found out that the Witches were really able to do wonderful things. There were four of them in this country, and they ruled the people who live in the North and South and East and West. Fortunately, the Witches of the North and South were good, and I knew they would do me no harm; but the Witches of the East and West were terribly wicked, and had they not thought I was more powerful than they themselves, they would surely have destroyed me."

"Oh, no, my dear; I'm really a very good man, but I'm a very bad Wizard, I must admit."

""Congratulate me. I am going to Oz to get my brains at last. When I return I shall be as other men are." "I have always liked you as you were," said Dorothy simply."

"The Scarecrow was now the ruler of the Emerald City, and although he was not a Wizard the people were proud of him. "For," they said, "there is not another city in all the world that is ruled by a stuffed man." And, so far as they knew, they were quite right."

"My people have been wearing green glasses on their eyes for so long that most of them think this really is an Emerald City."

"I have heard that Glinda is a beautiful woman, who knows how to keep young in spite of the many years she has lived."

"The Silver Shoes," said the Good Witch, "have wonderful powers. And one of the most curious things about them is that they can carry you to any place in the world in three steps, and each step will be made in the wink of an eye. All you have to do is to knock the heels together three times and command the shoes to carry you wherever you wish to go."

"Aunt Em had just come out of the house to water the cabbages when she looked up and saw Dorothy running toward her. "My darling child!" she cried, folding the little girl in her arms and covering her face with kisses. "Where in the world did you come from?" "From the Land of Oz," said Dorothy gravely. "And here is Toto, too. And oh, Aunt Em! I'm so glad to be at home again!""

"If you will take the trouble to consult your dictionary, you will find that demons may be either good or bad, like any other class of beings. Originally all demons were good, yet of late years people have come to consider all demons evil. I do not know why. Should you read Hesiod you will find he says: 'Soon was a world of holy demons made, Aerial spirits, by great Jove designed To be on earth the guardians of mankind.' " "But Jove was himself a myth," objected Rob, who had been studying mythology. The Demon shrugged his shoulders. "Then take the words of Mr. Shakespeare, to whom you all defer," he replied. "Do you not remember that he says: 'Thy demon (that's thy spirit which keeps thee) is Noble, courageous, high, unmatchable.' " "Oh, if Shakespeare says it, that's all right,' answered the boy.""

"Familiarity with any great thing removes our awe of it. The great general is only terrible to the enemy; the great poet is frequently scolded by his wife; the children of the great statesman clamber about his knees with perfect trust and impunity; the great actor who is called before the curtain by admiring audiences is often waylaid at the stage door by his creditors."

"And, afterward, when a child was naughty or disobedient, its mother would say: "You must pray to the good Santa Claus for forgiveness. He does not like naughty children, and, unless you repent, he will bring you no more pretty toys."But Santa Claus himself would not have approved this speech. He brought toys to the children because they were little and helpless, and because he loved them. He knew that the best of children were sometimes naughty, and that the naughty ones were often good. It is the way with children, the world over, and he would not have changed their natures had he possessed the power to do so."

""In all this world there is nothing so beautiful as a happy child," says good old Santa Claus; and if he had his way the children would all be beautiful, for all would be happy."

"I remember for many, many centuries, my dears [said the fairy]. "I have grown tired of remembering--and of being a fairy continually, without any change to brighten my life." "To be sure!" said Seseley, with sympathy. "I never thought of fairy life in that way before. It must get to be quite tiresome." "And think of the centuries I must yet live!" exclaimed the fairy in a dismal voice. "Isn't it an awful thing to look forward to?" "It is, indeed," agreed Seseley. "I'd be glad to exchange lives with you," said Helda, looking at the fairy with intense admiration. "But you can't do that," answered the little creature quickly. "Mortals can't become fairies, you know--although I believe there was once a mortal who was made immortal."

"We long for what we cannot have, yet desire it not so much because it would benefit us, as because it is beyond our reach."

"The dying does not amount to much," he [Zog the Sea Monster] said; "it is the thinking about it that hurts you mortals most. I've watched many a shipwreck at sea, and the people would howl and scream for hours before the ship broke up. Their terror was very enjoyable. But when the end came they all drowned as peacefully as if they were going to sleep, so it didn't amuse me at all."

"You are a monster and a wicked magician," said the Mermaid Queen. "I am," agreed Zog, "but I cannot help it. I was created part man, part bird, part fish, part beast and part reptile, and such a monstrosity could not be otherwise than wicked."

"Well, how do you like him?" asked Sacho, with a laugh. "We hate him!" declared Trot, emphatically. "Of course you do," replied Sacho. "But, you're wasting time hating anything. It doesn't do you any good, or him any harm. Can you sing?" "A little," said Trot; "but I don't feel like singing now." "You're wrong about that," the boy asserted. "Anything that keeps you from singing is foolishness, unless it's laughter. Laughter, joy and song are the only good things in the world."

"They stand you under a big knife, which drops and slices you neatly in two—exactly in the middle. Then they match half of you to another person who has likewise been sliced—and there you are, patched to someone you don't care about and haven't much interest in. If your half wants to do something, the other half is likely to want to do something different, and the funny part of it is you don't quite know which is your half and which is the other half. It's a terrible punishment, and in a country where one can't die or be killed until he has lived his six hundred years, to be patched is a great misfortune."

"... The Ruler is the mos' 'risticratic person in any land," explained the little girl. "Even in America ever'body bows low to our President, an' the Blueskins are so 'fraid o' their Boolooroo that they tremble whenever they go near him." "But surely that is all wrong," said Tourmaline [the Queen of the Pinkies] gravely. "The Ruler is appointed to protect and serve the people, and here in the Pink Country I have the full power to carry out the laws. I even decree death, when such a punishment is merited. Therefore I am a mere agent to direct the laws, which are the Will of the People, and am only a public servant, obliged constantly to guard the welfare of my subjects." "In that case," said Button-Bright, "you're entitled to the best there is, to pay for your trouble. A powerful ruler ought to be rich and to live in a splendid palace. Your folks ought to treat you with great respect, as Trot says." "Oh, no," responded Tourmaline quickly; "that would indeed be very wrong. Too much should never be given to anyone. If, with my great power, conferred upon me by the people, I also possessed great wealth, I might be tempted to be cruel and overbearing. In that case my subjects would justly grow envious of my superior station. If I lived as luxuriously as my people do, and had servants and costly gowns, the good Pinkies would say that their Queen had more than they themselves—and it would be true. No; our way is best. The Ruler, be it king or queen, has absolute power to rule, but no riches—no high station—no false adulation. The people have the wealth and honor, for it is their due. The Queen has nothing but the power to execute the laws, to adjust grievances and to compel order."

"Mombi was not exactly a Witch, because the Good Witch who ruled that part of the Land of Oz had forbidden any other Witch to exist in her dominions. So Tip's guardian, however much she might aspire to working magic, realized it was unlawful to be more than a Sorceress, or at most a Wizardess."

"I never deal in transformations, for they are not honest, and no respectable sorceress likes to make things appear to be what they are not."

"At this exquisite vision Tip's old comrades stared in wonder for the space of a full minute, and then every head bent low in honest admiration of the lovely Princess Ozma. The girl herself cast one look into Glinda's bright face, which glowed with pleasure and satisfaction, and then turned upon the others. Speaking the words with sweet diffidence, she said: "I hope none of you will care less for me than you did before. I'm just the same Tip, you know; only — only — " "Only you're different!" said the Pumpkinhead; and everyone thought it was the wisest speech he had ever made."

"He was only about as tall as Dorothy herself, and his body was round as a ball and made out of burnished copper. Also his head and limbs were copper, and these were jointed or hinged to his body in a peculiar way, with metal caps over the joints, like the armor worn by knights in days of old. He stood perfectly still, and where the light struck upon his form it glittered as if made of pure gold."

"SMITH & TINKER'S Patent Double-Action, Extra-Responsive, Thought-Creating, Perfect-Talking MECHANICAL MAN Fitted with our Special Clock-Work Attachment. Thinks, Speaks, Acts, and Does Everything but Live. Manufactured only at our Works at Evna, Land of Ev. All infringements will be promptly Prosecuted according to Law."

"Oh! Are you hungry?" she [Dorothy] asked, turning to the other beast, who was just then yawning so widely that he displayed two rows of terrible teeth and a mouth big enough to startle anyone. "Dreadfully hungry," answered the Tiger, snapping his jaws together with a fierce click. "Then why don't you eat something?" she asked. "It's no use," said the Tiger sadly. "I've tried that, but I always get hungry again." "Why, it is the same with me," said Dorothy. "Yet I keep on eating." "But you eat harmless things, so it doesn't matter," replied the Tiger. "For my part, I'm a savage beast, and have an appetite for all sorts of poor little living creatures, from a chipmunk to fat babies." "How dreadful!" said Dorothy. "Isn't it, though?" returned the Hungry Tiger, licking his lips with his long red tongue. "Fat babies! Don't they sound delicious? But I've never eaten any, because my conscience tells me it is wrong. If I had no conscience I would probably eat the babies and then get hungry again, which would mean that I had sacrificed the poor babies for nothing. No; hungry I was born, and hungry I shall die. But I'll not have any cruel deeds on my conscience to be sorry for." "I think you are a very good tiger," said Dorothy, patting the huge head of the beast. "In that you are mistaken," was the reply. "I am a good beast, perhaps, but a disgracefully bad tiger. For it is the nature of tigers to be cruel and ferocious, and in refusing to eat harmless living creatures I am acting as no good tiger has ever before acted."

"Cruelty," remarked the monarch, puffing out wreathes of smoke and watching them float into the air, "is a thing I can't abide. So, as slaves must work hard, and the Queen of Ev and her children were delicate and tender, I transformed them all into articles of ornament and bric-a-brac and scattered them around the various rooms of my palace. Instead of being obliged to labor, they merely decorate my apartments, and I really think I have treated them with great kindness."

"Although this tremendous army consisted of rock-colored Nomes, all squat and fat, they were clothed in glittering armor of polished steel, inlaid with beautiful gems. Upon his brow each wore a brilliant electric light, and they bore sharp spears and swords and battle-axes of solid bronze. It was evident they were perfectly trained, for they stood in straight rows, rank after rank, with their weapons held erect and true, as if awaiting but the word of command to level them upon their foes. "This," said the Nome King, "is but a small part of my army. No ruler upon Earth has ever dared to fight me, and no ruler ever will, for I am too powerful to oppose.""

"It seems to me," said the Scarecrow, thoughtfully, "that our best plan is to wheedle his Majesty into giving up his slaves, since he is too great a magician to oppose." "This is the most sensible thing any of you have suggested," declared the Nome King. "It is folly to threaten me, but I'm so kind-hearted that I cannot stand coaxing or wheedling. If you really wish to accomplish anything by your journey, my dear Ozma, you must coax me."

"I have nine lives," said the kitten, purring softly as it walked around in a circle and then came back to the roof; "but I can't lose even one of them by falling in this country, because I really couldn't manage to fall if I wanted to."

"He told Dorothy he had brushed his shaggy hair and whiskers; but she thought he must have brushed them the wrong way, for they were quite as shaggy as before."

"Money! Money in Oz!" cried the Tin Woodman. "What a queer idea! Did you suppose we are so vulgar as to use money here?" "Why not?" asked the shaggy man. "If we used money to buy things with, instead of love and kindness and the desire to please one another, then we should be no better than the rest of the world," declared the Tin Woodman. "Fortunately money is not known in the Land of Oz at all. We have no rich, and no poor; for what one wishes the others all try to give him, in order to make him happy, and no one in all Oz cares to have more than he can use." "Good!" cried the shaggy man, greatly pleased to hear this. "I also despise money — a man in Butterfield owes me fifteen cents, and I will not take it from him. The Land of Oz is surely the most favored land in all the world, and its people the happiest. I should like to live here always."

"Oh indeed!" exclaimed the King. Then he turned to his servants and said: "Please take General Crinkle to the torture chamber. There you will kindly slice him into thin slices. Afterward you may feed him to the seven-headed dogs."

"It seems unfortunate that strong people are usually so disagreeable and overbearing that no one cares for them. In fact, to be different from your fellow creatures is always a misfortune. The Growleywogs knew that they were disliked and avoided by every one, so they had become surly and unsociable even among themselves."

"If any of us takes a rest, We'll be arrested sure, And get no restitution 'Cause the rest we must endure."

"We consider a prisoner unfortunate. He is unfortunate in two ways — because he has done something wrong and because he is deprived of his liberty. Therefore we should treat him kindly, because of his misfortune, for otherwise he would become hard and bitter and would not be sorry he had done wrong. Ozma thinks that one who has committed a fault did so because he was not strong and brave; therefore she puts him in prison to make him strong and brave. When that is accomplished he is no longer a prisoner, but a good and loyal citizen and everyone is glad that he is now strong enough to resist doing wrong. You see, it is kindness that makes one strong and brave; and so we are kind to our prisoners."

"They tell me meat is going up, but if I can manage to catch you I'm sure it will soon be going down."

"Electricity was a part of the world from its creation, and therefore my Electra is as old as Daylight or Moonlight, and equally beneficent to mortals and fairies alike."

"DIRECTIONS FOR USING: For THINKING:--Wind the Clockwork Man under his left arm, (marked No. 1). For SPEAKING:--Wind the Clockwork Man under his right arm, (marked No. 2). For WALKING and ACTION:--Wind Clockwork Man in the middle of his back, (marked No. 3). N. B.--This Mechanism is guaranteed to work perfectly for a thousand years."

"Ruggedo, having nothing to do, was greatly bored. He sent for the Long-Eared Hearer and asked him to listen carefully and report what was going on in the big world. "It seems," said the Hearer, after listening for a while, "that the women in America have clubs." "Are there spikes in them?" asked Ruggedo, yawning. "I cannot hear any spikes, Your Majesty," was the reply. "Then their clubs are not as good as my sceptre. What else do you hear?" "There's a war." "Bah! there's always a war. What else?""

"Seems to me," said Cap'n Bill, as he sat beside Trot under the big acacia tree, looking out over the blue ocean, "seems to me, Trot, as how the more we know, the more we find we don't know." "I can't quite make that out, Cap'n Bill," answered the little girl in a serious voice, after a moment's thought, during which her eyes followed those of the old sailor-man across the glassy surface of the sea. "Seems to me that all we learn is jus' so much gained." "I know; it looks that way at first sight," said the sailor, nodding his head; "but those as knows the least have a habit of thinkin' they know all there is to know, while them as knows the most admits what a turr'ble big world this is. It's the knowing ones that realize one lifetime ain't long enough to git more'n a few dips o' the oars of knowledge."

"If I'm going to starve, I'll do it all at once—not by degrees."

"Then he was wrong to have been born at all. Cheek- eek-eek-eek, oo, hoo!" chuckled Rinkitink, his fat body shaking with merriment. "But it's hard to prevent oneself from being born; there's no chance for protest, eh, Bilbil?"

"Were we all like the Sawhorse, we would all be Sawhorses, which would be too many of the kind. Were we all like Hank, we would be a herd of mules; if like Toto, we would be a pack of dogs; should we all become the shape of the Woozy, he would no longer be remarkable for his unusual appearance. Finally, were you all like me, I would consider you so common that I would not care to associate with you. To be individual, my friends, to be different from others, is the only way to become distinguished from the common herd. Let us be glad, therefore, that we differ from one another in form and in disposition. Variety is the spice of life, and we are various enough to enjoy one another's society; so let us be content."

"To be sure. Our throats and stomachs are lined with solid gold, and we find the thistles nourishing and good to eat. As a matter of fact, there is nothing else in our country that is fit for food. All around the City of Thi grow countless thistles, and all we need do is to go and gather them. If we wanted anything else to eat, we would have to plant it, and grow it, and harvest it, and that would be a lot of trouble and make us work, which is an occupation we detest."

"A curious thing about Ugu the Shoemaker was that he didn't suspect in the least that he was wicked. He wanted to be powerful and great, and he hoped to make himself master of all the Land of Oz that he might compel everyone in that fairy country to obey him, His ambition blinded him to the rights of others, and he imagined anyone else would act just as he did if anyone else happened to be as clever as himself."

"Beautiful things may be admired, if not loved," asserted the Tin Man. "Flowers are beautiful, for instance, but we are not inclined to marry them. Duty, on the contrary, is a bugle call to action, whether you are inclined to act, or not. In this case, I obey the bugle call of duty."

"I think I prefer to be a Bear," said Big Bru. "I was born a Bear, and I know a Bear's ways. So I am satisfied to live as a Bear lives."

"Mr. Baum did his best to answer all the letters from his small earth-friends before he had to leave them, but he couldn't answer quite all, for there were very many. In May, nineteen hundred nineteen, he went away to take his stories to the little child-souls who had lived here too long ago to read the Oz stories for themselves. We are sorry he could not stay here and we are sad to tell you this is his last complete story."

"Everybody here is a dictator of something or other. They're all office holders. That's what keeps them contented. But I'm the Supreme Dictator of all, and I'm elected once a year. This is a democracy, you know, where the people are allowed to vote for their rulers. A good many others would like to be Supreme Dictator, but as I made a law that I am always to count the votes myself, I am always elected."

""What do you want?" the ape asked at last. "Nothing," said Ervic. "You may have that!" retorted the ape"

"In fact, Mr. Watson, it's a queer world, and the longer I live in it the queerer I find it. Once I thought it would be a good idea to regulate things myself and run the world as it ought to be run; but I gave it up long ago. The world's a stage, they say; but the show ain't always amusing, by a long chalk, and sometimes I wish I didn't have a reserved seat."

"I think the world is like a great mirror, and reflects our lives just as we ourselves look upon it. Those who turn sad faces toward the world find only sadness reflected. But a smile is reflected in the same way, and cheers and brightens our hearts. You think there is no pleasure to be had in life. That is because you are heartsick and — and tired, as you say. With one sad story ended you are afraid to begin another — a sequel — feeling it would be equally sad. But why should it be? Isn't the joy or sorrow equally divided in life?"

"To destroy an offender cannot benefit society so much as to redeem him."

"They're mostly foreigners, Mr. Merrick, who haven't yet fully mastered the English language. But," he added, thoughtfully, "a few among them might subscribe, if your country sheet contains any news of interest at all. This is rather a lonely place for my men and they get dissatisfied at times. All workmen seem chronically dissatisfied, and their women constantly urge them to rebellion. Already there are grumblings, and they claim they're buried alive in this forlorn forest. Don't appreciate the advantages of country life, you see, and I've an idea they'll begin to desert, pretty soon. Really, a live newspaper might do them good — especially if you print a little socialistic drivel now and then."

"a heart is not judged by how much you love but by how much you are loved by others"

"We are beginning to wonder whether a servant girl hasn’t the best of it after all. She knows how the salad tastes without the dressing, and she knows how life’s lived before it gets to the parlor door."

"I am not a critic; to me criticism is so often nothing more than the eye garrulously denouncing the shape of the peephole that gives access to hidden treasure."

"New York is the meeting place of the peoples, the only city where you can hardly find a typical American."

"After all, it is not where one washes one’s neck that counts but where one moistens one’s throat."

"Well, isn’t Bohemia a place where everyone is as good as everyone else — and must not a waiter be a little less than a waiter to be a good Bohemian?"

"Morbid? You make me laugh. This life I write and draw and portray is life as it is, and therefore you call it morbid. Look at my life. Look at the life around me. Where is this beauty that I am supposed to miss? The nice episodes that others depict? Is not everything morbid? I mean the life of people stripped of their masks. Where are the relieving features? Often I sit down to work at my drawing board, at my typewriter. All of a sudden my joy is gone. I feel tired of it all because, I think, "What's the use?" Today we are, tomorrow dead. We are born and don't know why. We live and suffer and strive, envious or envied. We love, we hate, we work, we admire, we despise. … Why? And we die, and no one will ever know that we have been born."

"If Helen of Troy could have been seen eating peppermints out of a paper bag, it is highly probable that her admirers would have been an entirely different class. It is the thing you are found doing while the horde looks on that you shall be loved for — or ignored."

"Suffering for love is how I have learned practically everything I know, love of grandmother up and on."

"Of course I think of the past and of Paris, what else is there to remember?"

"The Seal, she lounges like a bride, Much too docile, there's no doubt; Madame Récamier, on side, (if such she has), and bottom out."

"We are adhering to life now with our last muscle — the heart."

"There is always more surface to a shattered object than a whole."

"Someday beneath some hard Capricious star — Spreading its light a little Over far, We'll know you for the woman That you are."

"What turn of card, what trick of game Undiced? And you we valued still a little More than Christ."

"Ah God! she settles down we say; It means her powers slip away It means she draws back day by day From good or bad."

"Somewhere beneath her hurried curse, A corpse lies bounding in a hearse; And friends and relatives disperse, And are not stirred."

"What turn of body, what of lust Undiced? So we've worshipped you a little More than Christ."

"One sees you sitting in the sun Asleep; With the sweeter gifts you had And didn't keep, One grieves that the altars of Your vice lie deep."

"We watched her come with subtle fire And learned feet, Stumbling among the lustful drunk Yet somehow sweet. We saw the crimson leave her cheeks Flame in her eyes; For when a woman lives in awful haste A woman dies. The jests that lit our hours by night And made them gay, Soiled a sweet and ignorant soul And fouled its play."

"The heart of the jealous knows the best and most satisfying love, that of the other’s bed, where the rival perfects the lover’s imperfections."

"I’m a fart in a gale of wind, a humble violet, under a cow pat."

"Dreams have only the pigmentation of fact."

"Sleep demands of us a guilty immunity. There is not one of us who, given an eternal incognito, a thumbprint nowhere set against our souls, would not commit rape, murder and all abominations."

"The night is a skin pulled over the head of day that the day may be in torment."

"One's life is peculiar to one's own when one has invented it."

"In the acceptance of depravity the sense of the past is most truly captured. What is a ruin but time easing itself of endurance? Corruption is the Age of Time."

"Destiny and history are untidy."

"A man is whole only when he takes into account his shadow as well as himself — and what is a man's shadow but his upright astonishment?"

"Life is not to be told, call it as loud as you like, it will not tell itself."

"A strong sense of identity gives man an idea he can do no wrong; too little accomplishes the same."

"Contemporary writers and artists praised her style, feared her tongue; she was a beauty, but a talented, acerbic, and powerfully intelligent one."

"Complex in her privacy, refusing to be controlled by an audience or pinioned to a single representation, she once told Henry Ramont of the New York Times, "I used to be invited by people who said, 'Get Djuna for dinner, she's amusing.' So I stopped it.""

"She was a spendthrift of the spirit, an American in Paris when, as Evelyn Waugh said, the going was good."

"Nothing is accidental in the universe — this is one of my Laws of Physics — except the entire universe itself, which is Pure Accident, pure divinity. So it cannot be an accident that I think of you so constantly."

"The worst cynicism: a belief in luck."

"Old women snore violently. They are like bodies into which bizarre animals have crept at night; the animals are vicious, bawdy, noisy. How they snore! There is no shame to their snoring. Old women turn into old men."

"It is not her body that he wants but it is only through her body that he can take possession of another human being, so he must labor upon her body, he must enter her body, to make his claim."

"If you are a writer you locate yourself behind a wall of silence and no matter what you are doing, driving a car or walking or doing housework — you can still be writing, because you have that space."

"When people say there is too much violence in [my books], what they are saying is there is too much reality in life."

"Our enemy is by tradition our savior, in preventing us from superficiality."

"When poets — write about food it is usually celebratory. Food as the thing-in-itself, but also the thoughtful preparation of meals, the serving of meals, meals communally shared: a sense of the sacred in the profane."

"If food is poetry, is not poetry also food?"

"The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it! — that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms — nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?"

"Prose — it might be speculated — is discourse; poetry ellipsis. Prose is spoken aloud; poetry overheard. The one is presumably articulate and social, a shared language, the voice of "communication"; the other is private, allusive, teasing, sly, idiosyncratic as the spider’s delicate web, a kind of witchcraft unfathomable to ordinary minds."

"When you’re 50 you start thinking about things you haven’t thought about before. I used to think getting old was about vanity — but actually it’s about losing people you love. Getting wrinkles is trivial."

"Homo sapiens is the species that invents symbols in which to invest passion and authority, then forgets that symbols are inventions."

"Constant interruptions are the destruction of imagination."

"I can entertain the proposition that life is a metaphor for boxing — for one of those bouts that go on and on, round following round, jabs, missed punches, clinches, nothing determined, again the bell and again and you and your opponent so evenly matched it’s impossible not to see that your opponent is you... Life is like boxing in many unsettling respects. But boxing is only like boxing."

"Boxing is about being hit rather more than it is about hitting, just as it is about feeling pain, if not devastating psychological paralysis, more than it is about winning."

"Boxing is a celebration of the lost religion of masculinity all the more trenchant for its being lost."

"The spectacle of human beings fighting each other for whatever reason, including, at certain well-publicized times, staggering sums of money, is enormously disturbing because it violates a taboo of our civilization. Many men and women, however they steel themselves, cannot watch a boxing match because they cannot allow themselves to see what it is they are seeing. One thinks helplessly, This can’t be happening, even as, and usually quite routinely, it is happening. In this way boxing as a public spectacle is akin to pornography: in each case the spectator is made a voyeur, distanced, yet presumably intimately involved, in an event that is not supposed to happening as it is happening. The pornographic "drama," though as fraudulent as professional wrestling, makes a claim for being about something absolutely serious, if not humanly profound: it is not so much about itself as about the violation of a taboo. That the taboo is spiritual rather than physical, or sexual — that our most valuable human experience, love, is being is being desecrated, parodied, mocked — is surely at the core of our culture’s fascination with pornography."

"In any case, raw aggression is thought to be the peculiar province of men, as nurturing is the peculiar province of women... The psychologist Erik Erikson discovered that, while little girls playing with blocks generally create pleasant interior spaces and attractive entrances, little boys are inclined to pile up the blocks as high as they can and then watch them fall down: "the contemplation of ruins," Erikson observes, "is a masculine specialty.""

"Boxing has become America’s tragic theater."

"To be knocked out doesn’t mean what it seems. A boxer does not have to get up."

"[The] third man in the ring makes boxing possible."

"Love commingled with hate is more powerful than love. Or hate."

"Any number of definitions help to determine who we are. It doesn't hurt to be a woman writer, an American woman writer, American woman writer of the 21st century. I think all these descriptions of us — and they're descriptions and adjectives that pertain to you — none of them diminish you, really. I think that maybe there's a kind of deepening or expansion the more identifications you have."

"The written word, obviously, is very inward, and when we're reading, we're thinking. It's a sort of spiritual, meditative activity. When we're looking at visual objects, I think our eyes are obviously directed outward, so there's not as much reflective time. And it's the reflectiveness and the spiritual inwardness about reading that appeals to me."

"It's one of those secrets that's embarrassing to acknowledge, but we do love our students."

"Very few writers of distinction in fact were outstanding as undergraduates."

"There is the expectation that a younger generation has the opportunity to redeem the crimes and failings of their elders and would have the strength and idealism to do so."

"At a time when politics deals in distortions and half truths, truth is to be found in the liberal arts. There's something afoot in this country and you are very much a part of it."

"We all have numerous identities that shift with circumstances. The writing self is likely to be a highly private, conjured sort of being — you would not find it in a grocery store."

"If I’m required to identify myself on a form, I write “teacher.” I’ve been a teacher almost as long as I’ve been writing. [Pause.] I think of myself less as a writer than as a person who writes — or tries to. Each morning is a kind of obstacle course in which the obstacles seem to have all the advantage."

"Any kind of creative activity is likely to be stressful. The more anxiety, the more you feel that you are headed in the right direction. Easiness, relaxation, comfort — these are not conditions that usually accompany serious work."

"The writer is a “somewhat mystical” — or do I mean “mythical”? — person."

"Writers and artists never pay attention to advice given by their elders, quite rightly. The only worthwhile advice is the most general: Keep trying, don’t give up, don’t be discouraged, don’t pay attention to detractors. Everyone knows this."

"My theory is that literature is essential to society in the way that dreams are essential to our lives. We can’t live without dreaming — as we can’t live without sleep. We are “conscious” beings for only a limited period of time, then we sink back into sleep — the “unconscious.” It is nourishing, in ways we can’t fully understand."

"I think that art is the commemoration of life in its variety. The novel, for instance, is “historic” in its embodiment in a specific place and time and its suggestion that there is meaning to our actions. Without the stillness, thoughtfulness and depths of art, and without the ceaseless moral rigors of art, we would have no shared culture — no collective memory. As it is, in contemporary societies, where so much concentration is focused on social media, insatiable in its myriad, fleeting interests, the “stillness and thoughtfulness” of a more permanent art feels threatened."

"I know,—yet my arms are empty, That fondly folded seven, And the mother heart within me Is almost starved for heaven."

"Never yet was a spring-time, Late though lingered the snow, That the sap stirred not at the whisper Of the south wind, sweet and low; Never yet was a spring-time When the buds forgot to blow."

"Fifteen takes its perplexities very seriously and grieves wihout restraint over its sorrows."

"One of the first things to be noted in business life is its imperialism. Business is exacting, engrossing, and inelastic."

"Let every birthday be a festival, a time when the gladness of the house finds expression in flowers, in gifts, in a little fête. Never should a birthday be passed over without note, or as if it were a common day, never should it cease to be a garlanded milestone in the road of life."

"Every child's birthright is a happy home."

"My own opinion is that youthfulness of feeling is retained, as is youthfulness of appearance, by constant use of the intellect."

"Mind does dominate body. We are superior to the house in which we dwell."

"Self complacency is fatal to progress."

"On the day long after childhood when I suddenly heard of his death, the sky grew dark above my head. I was walking on a Southern highway, and a friend driving in a pony carriage passed me, stopped and said, "Have you heard that Charles Dickens is dead?" It was as if I had been robbed of one of the dearest of friends."

"I would not, if I could, give up the memory of the joy I have had in books for any advantage that could be offered in other pursuits or occupations. Books have been to me what gold is to the miser, what new fields are to the explorer, what a new discovery is to the scientific student."

"In the whole round of human affairs little is so fatal to peace as misunderstanding."

"The image of those midwestern storms that rip up the world as you know it, and leave, like a sacrifice, a rainbow to make you forget what has come before."

"When she had packed all the artifacts that made up their personal history into liquor store boxes, the house became strictly a feminine place. She stood with her hands on her hips, stoically accepting the absence of old Boston Celtics coasters and the tangle of fishing poles, the old dartboard from a Scots pub, the toolbox and downhill skis, the silky patterned ties which sat in the base of one box like a writhing mass of snakes. Without these things, one tended to notice the bright eyelet curtains, the vase filled with yawning crocuses, a needlepoint pillow.""

"When he gave it to her that day, she’d held it up to the light, turning it back and forth, until his hands had come over hers, stilling. ‘Be careful,’ he had said. ‘It’s fragile. See the soft lead? It bends. It can break.’ She wondered why she had not perceived that conversation then the same way she did now: as a shrill and distant warning.”"

"In the moments before, she laid a hand on his arm. 'No matter what,' she said, giving him a look, 'you cannot stop."

"Allie had trouble convincing herself that the reason they had gotten married years later did not have to do with the fact that after college, they were two of the few who had come back to Wheelock. Cam had returned because it was expected of him, Allie because there was nowhere else she really wanted to be.”"

"He certainly wasn’t about to let a murderer off the hook because the man was his cousin. And bending the laws would be unethical. If there was any principle Cameron MacDonald lived by, it was doing things the way they were supposed to be done. After all, as both police chief and clan chief, it had been the pattern of his entire life.”"

"You know it's never fifty-fifty in a marriage. It's always seventy-thirty, or sixty-forty. Someone falls in love first. Someone puts someone else up on a pedestal. Someone works very hard to keep things rolling smoothly; someone else sails along for the ride."

"There are always sides. There is always a winner, and a loser. For every person who gets, there's someone who must give."

"WE ARE ALL, I SUPPOSE, beholden to our parents—the question is, how much?"

"They sat me down and told me all the usual stuff, of course—but they also explained that they chose little embryonic me, specifically, because I could save my sister, Kate. ‘We loved you even more,’ my mother made sure to say, ‘because we knew what exactly we were getting.’"

"My parents tried to make things normal, but that’s a relative term. The truth is, I was never really a kid. To be honest, neither were Kate and Jesse. I guess maybe my brother had his moment in the sun for the four years he was alive before Kate got diagnosed, but ever since then, we’ve been too busy looking over our shoulders to run headlong into growing up. You know how most little kids think they’re like cartoon characters—if an anvil drops on their heads they can peel themselves off the sidewalk and keep going? Well, I never once believed that. How could I, when we practically set a place for Death at the dinner table?"

"My mother moves so fast I do not even see it coming. But she slaps my face hard enough to make my head snapbackward. She leaves a print that stains me long after it’s faded. Just so you know: shame is five-fingered."

"Anna is the only proof I have that I was born into this family. Instead of dropped off on the doorstep by some Bonnie and Clyde couple that ran off into the night. On the surface, we’re polar opposites. Under the skin, though, we’re the same: people think they know what they’re getting, and they are always wrong."

"If there was a religion of Annaism, and I had to tell you how humans made their way to Earth, it would go like this: in the beginning, there was nothing at all but the moon and the sun. And the moon wanted to come out during the day, but there was something so much brighter that seemed to fill up all those hours. The moon grew hungry, thinner and thinner, until she was just a slice of herself, and her tips were as sharp as a knife. By accident, because that is the way most things happen, she poked a hole in the night and out spilled a million stars, like a fountain of tears.Horrified, the moon tried to swallow them up. And sometimes this worked, because she got fatter and rounder. But mostly it didn’t, because there were just so many. The stars kept coming, until they made the sky so bright that the sun got jealous. He invited the stars to his side of the world, where it was always bright. What he didn’t tell them, though, was that in the daytime, they’d never be seen. So the stupid ones leaped from the sky to the ground, and they froze under the weight of their own foolishness.The moon did her best. She carved each of these blocks of sorrow into a man or a woman. She spent the rest of her time watching out so that her other stars wouldn’t fall. She spent the rest of her time holding on to whatever scraps she had left."

"Jessie’s breathing evens against me, like it used to when he was so small, when I used to carry him upstairs after he’d fallen asleep in my lap. He used to hit me over and over with questions: What’s a two-inch hose for; a one-inch? How come you wash the engines? Does the can man ever et to drive? I realize that I cannot remember exactly when he stopped asking. But I do remember feeling as if something had gone missing, as if the loss of a kid’s hero worship canache like a phantom limb."

"Two thousand years ago the night sky looked completely different, and so when you get right down to it, the Greek conceptions of star signs as related to birth dates are grossly inaccurate for today’s day and age. It’s called the Line of procession: back then the sun didn’t set in Taurus, but in Gemini. A September 24 birthday didn’t mean you were a Libra,but a Virgo. And there was a thirteenth zodiac constellation, Ophichus and the Serpent Bearer, which rose between Sagittarius and Scorpio for only four days. The reason it’s all off kilter? The earth’s axis wobbles. Life isn’t nearly as stable as we want it to be."

"Things don’t always look as they seem. Some stars, for example, look like bright pinholes, but when you get them pegged under a microscope for find you’re looking at a globular cluster-a million stars that, to us, presents as a single entity. On aless dramatic note there are triples, like Alpha Centauri, which up close turns out to be a double star and a red dwarf inclose proximity.There’s an indigenous tribe in Africa that tells of life coming from the second star in Alpha Centauri, the one no one can see without a high-powered observatory telescope. Come to think of it, the Greeks, the Aboriginals, and the Plains Indians all lived continents apart and all, independently, looked at the same septuplet knot of the Pleiades and believed them tobe seven young girls running away from something that threatened to hurt them.Make of it what you will."

"There are stars in the night sky that look brighter than the others, and when you look at them through a telescope you realize you are looking at twins. The two stars rotate around each other, sometimes taking nearly a hundred years to do it.They create so much gravitational pull there’s no room around for anything else. You might see a blue star, for example,and realize only later that it has a white dwarf as a companion-that first one shines so bright, by the time you notice the second one, it’s really too late."

"You don't love someone because they're perfect. You love them in spite of the fact that they're not."

"Maybe who we are isn't so much about what we do, but rather what we're capable of when we least expect it."

"If you have a sister and she dies, do you stop saying you have one? Or are you always a sister, even when the other half of the equation is gone?"

"Let me tell you this: if you meet a loner, no matter what they tell you, it's not because they enjoy solitude. It's because they have tried to blend into the world before, and people continue to disappoint them."

"If you gave someone your heart and they died, did they take it with them? Did you spend the rest of forever with a hole inside you that couldn't be filled?"

"Either Josie was someone she didn’t want to be, or she was someone who nobody wanted."

"Newborns reminded her of tiny Buddhas, faces full of divinity […] That holiness, somehow, disappeared, and Lacy was always left wondering where in this world it might go."

"The enemy was always supposed to be an outsider, not the kid who was sitting right next to you."

"Everyone broke up in laughter, as Lacy watched. Alex, she realized, could fit anywhere. Here, or with Lacy’s family at dinner, or in a courtroom, or probably at tea with the queen. She was a chameleon."

"It struck Lacy that she didn’t really know what color a chameleon was before it started changing."

"How could you change a boy’s bedding every week and feed him breakfast and drive him to the orthodontist and not know him at all?"

"Did everyone in jail think they were innocent? All this time Peter had spent lying on the bench, convincing himself that he was nothing like anyone else in the Grafton County Jail—and as it turned out, that was a lie."

"Logan Rourke wasn’t her father, not any more than the guy who’d taken their coins at the toll booth or any other stranger. You could share DNA with someone and still have nothing in common with them"

"“My daughter won’t go to school this year until eleven o’clock, because she can’t handle being there when third period starts,” the woman said. “Everything scares her. This has ruined her whole life; why should Peter Houghton’s punishment be any less?”"

"When you begin a journey of revenge, start by digging two graves: one for your enemy, and one for yourself."

"Laura Stone knew exactly how to go to hell. She could map out its geography on napkins at departmental cocktail parties; she was able to recite all the passageways and rivers and folds by heart; she was on a first-name basis with its sinners."

"For a moment Laura hesitated outside the door, wondering how she could have been naïve enough to believe this horrible thing had happened to Trixie, when in truth it had happened to all three of them."

"I was terrified of that ghost just like they were, but I never let anyone know it. That way, I knew they might call me a lot of awful names ... but one of them wasn't coward."

"Power isn't doing something terrible to someone who's weaker than you, … It's having the strength to do something terrible, and choosing not to."

"Mindplayers didn't really address a lot about the criminal element of this particular world. Everybody in the Mindplayers world couldn't possibly live like the few people that you saw. A lot of times, a culture almost seems to float on top of its own black market, and things from that filter up through the culture. I get the feeling that this law-abiding peaceful thing that I live in now is almost never-never land - to a certain extent it's not even really real. I spent a decade working for Hallmark cards, which is supposed to epitomise sweetness and light and good living and ethics and morals. But Hallmark, like many American manufacturers, has a lot of things like toys and ornaments manufactured in the Far East, by people in sweat-shops. These are children, old people, poor people, people who don't have enough to eat; we get these things so cheaply because we simply use these people and throw them away. This is what I mean about our culture, our never-never land, floating on top of our underworld."

"That was the real price, I thought. Once you had power, you ended up having to depend on it. Eventually, like anything else, it owned you. Eventually? No, from the beginning; we just don’t bother admitting it at first."

"If you need someone to believe something, make them go for a walk with you. Walking takes up most of the energy they’d use to disbelieve you."

"There were those who insisted this had already happened, but they could never come up with any solid examples, only vague stories involving the cousin of a daughter of a friend-of-a-friend who overheard someone on an all-night bus telling someone else about it."

"Technology disgusts me. My senses tell me what I need to know. The rest is noise."

"I pushed her back hard. “You don’t belong with them; you’re not special, you have no place in any unseen world; you’re like me and the rest of our family. Get used to it!” She looked at me like I’d slapped her. “Oh, sorry,” I said, feeling equally stung by her reaction. “It’s hell being ordinary, but that’s the human condition.”"

"Everybody wants to be somebody but nobody wants to be just anybody."

"Meditation was such a loose term; you can do almost anything mentally and call it meditation."

"“Is that the way you feel about it?” I asked. “I’m a lawyer. I deal with the law as it is, not how I feel about it.”"

"If fasting really had anything to do with enlightenment then millions of people throughout the ages had died of the secret of life. And the secret of life was, in its entirety, that starvation hurt like a bastard."

"If a dataline is running and there’s no one there to watch it, has anything really happened?"

"I remembered the sign in front of the cathedral:"

"I said, What are you, a federal employee or just a freelance zombie?"

"And that vulgar gold lamé upholstery giving me a rash. You can dispute taste but you can’t stop it."

"Truth and information are not the same thing!"

"“Truth and information are not the same thing. I promise you that’s a fact.” “So you told yourself. But you have to admit that they do coincide often enough to let us all get around in the world safely.”"

"Fusion power we licked; static cling has us on the ropes. It’s a funny world."

"Some people gain freedom by trading one form of bondage for another."

"Maybe it’s better to be half of something wonderful than a whole nothing at all."

"Old responses live long, die hard, and frequently leave a troublesome corpse."

"Help him by helping him resist your help."

"It gets tricky here, but it’s always seemed to be that sanity is, or can be, as relative as anything else. Sacrifice an animal to Zeus and predict the future from the formation of its entrails—do that as a general in ancient Greece hoping for victory in a coming battle and you’re prudent. Do it today and you’re a clinical paranoid and a mean one, too. Sanity, like customs and manners, seems to have a strong basis in the accepted standards of a particular time and place."

"If you’re really going to die on me, you could at least rub my neck before you go."

"“‘Truth is cheap, but information costs.’ I can’t remember who said that.” “Vince What’s-His-Name,” said Sam. “Died in a terrorist raid or something. I thought you said all information should be free.” “It should. It isn’t. Knowledge is power. But power corrupts. Which means the Age of Fast Information is an extremely corrupt age in which to live.” “Aren’t they all?” Sam asked him."

"Keep your best whiskey in a bottle marked ‘mouthwash.’"

"The authenticity may have been dubious, but the excitement had been real."

"The Beater has still been young enough to feel immortal, at least on his better days. It was all, Wow, if we don’t slow down, we’re gonna die before we get old, except somehow it hadn’t happened that way. So they’d all assumed it never would, not dying, not getting old—hell, not even growing up."

"Nothing stays the same, Gina, nothing works forever. If I don’t like it, that’s too bad. If you don’t like it, that’s still too bad."

"It was a lonely thing. There was no way to be sure if it meant the same thing to both of you. He’d forgotten that part of making love, how you couldn’t assume that intent was as joined as bodies were."

"Everything seemed to happen when you were looking the other way."

"The only place to go now is into the context. If you can find it. Between the context and the content, between the mainline and the hardline, falls the shadow."

"If you can’t fuck it, and it doesn’t dance, eat it or throw it away."

"Reaching in, he wrapped the exposed wires around his fingers and ripped them out. The locks released, letting the door fall open a crack. “That’s what we call a Luddite hack.”"

"He had the sudden urge to put his arms around her, but the look on her face said that if he made a move toward her, she would move away, and maybe she would keep moving away from him until the distance between them was too great to cross again in one lifetime."

"That was it, then, civilization was officially collapsed if the cops had stopped ticketing abandoned cars and roosted on them instead."

"Fez gave her a squeeze. “You’re a genius, Sam-I-Am.” She squirmed away from him uncomfortably. “It just makes sense, is all.” “Sometimes that’s all it takes to be a genius.”"

"Ninety percent of life was being there, and the rest was being there on time."

"The beautiful and favored region of the Northwest Coast is about to assume a commercial importance which is sure to stimulate inquiry concerning the matters herein treated of. I trust enough is contained between the covers of this book to induce the very curious to come and see."

"Doesn't a boy forever delight in making a girl cry? Whether it is his sister or cousin or school-fellow, he always has some little feminine victim to vent his mischievous propensities on, with a view to seeing her 'dissolved in tears'; when he adds insult to injury by denominating her a 'cry baby.'"

"There should be always contemporaneous recorded history. It is my experience that little value attaches to any other evidence, and that confusion results from admitting hearsay testimony. My whole effort has been to weed out worthless authorities and to stamp out prejudices."

"I have found Mrs. Frances Fuller Victor during her arduous labors for a period of ten years in my library, a lady of cultivated mind, of ability and singular application; likewise her physical endurance was remarkable."

"Her public monument is the work of her pen in her labors as an historian; her abiding memorial, for all who knew her best, is her strenuous intellect, her singleness of purpose, her transparent affections, and aspiring mind."

"I imagined in everybody I passed there was some story that they carried with them that would break your heart. So how could you have the temerity to approach that person and say, here's what's wrong with you?"

"The peculiar thing that he said was, all of our chiefs die on the road. And what he was talking about was, we must all bear up and know that we will all pass away, but it's important to keep these things alive and to give your life to the protection of these ideals."

"In the west, we believe we are the most progressive and socially just, but a lot of that is just a hopeful illusion."

"People understand that elders listen respectfully to everyone. There’s a place at their table for every person. But they know, too, that the elders have consistently been the best people to make important decisions. People are, therefore, comfortable deferring. Their dignity is not compromised, nor do they feel powerless or demeaned, because they are carrying out the decisions of the elders. They know the elders embody the wisdom of their ancestors, that without them they would never have gotten this far…"

"I would spend whole weeks trying to untangle the lush foliage of bribes, kickbacks, nepotism, pride, religion, and mañana that is business in South America."

"The real thing—that’s not what you want in the theater. Illusion, magic, imagination. What should have happened, not what did. Reality doesn’t make good theater."

"Serious thinkers pointed out that humankind was scarcely ready to colonize the stars, having solved none of its problems at home."

"She regarded boredom as a moral failing, the mark of a mind insufficiently stocked to occupy itself."

"Cooperation was, in the long run, a more powerful evolutionary strategy than violence, once a species was high-tech."

"And wasn’t that a common pattern in human history! Greedy religious orders, wanting to keep power for themselves, using customs and myth and threats and murder to keep the people in line and then making them believe it was all for their own good so they wouldn’t challenge the supremacy of the priesthood. Some political thinker of a few centuries ago had nailed it exactly: “Religion is the opiate of the people.”"

"Judge not. No culture was better than another, no culture should be deemed in need of uplifting. Crap! It was the worst kind of moral laziness masquerading as cultural relativism."

"How to reasonably object to artificiality, when all of anthropology spotlighted how artificial all cultural institutions actually were?"

"A conclusion is just the place where you got tired of thinking."

"But it would be anecdotal evidence only, undocumentable and, by definition, unrepeatable. Therefore, not science."

"An enormous amount of behavior grows out of genetic imperatives."

"He introduced Marbet as “project psychologist.” “I don’t believe in psychology,” Capelo said flatly. Marbet remain unruffled. “Even that based on physiology?” “If it’s based on chemistry, with replicable results from control experiments, then of course I believe in it. That’s science. Literary theories about the mind are not.” “Ah,” Marbet said. “Fairy tales, all. From Uncle Droselmeyer Freud to Lady Godiva Jennings, undressing some poor sap’s mind ‘consciousness layer’ by ‘consciousness layer.’ All for a large amount of money, of course.”"

"Do you always interfere in other people’s confrontations? Are you that most dangerous of all people, a peace-at-any-price meddler?"

"That’s not a hypothesis, Lyle. That’s sheer speculation, expressed in gibberish. It says nothing."

"When you don’t know what you’re doing, Kaufman reflected, you can easily recycle from other efforts where you also didn’t know what you were doing."

"In the military, it can be more fatal to admit you made a mistake than to actually make one."

"Every single war ever fought anywhere had spawned shadow battles between the warring governments and their own citizens. Black markets, war profiteering, blockade runners, quislings, conscientious objectors, organized crime and its less organized siblings. False government contracts, false traveling papers, false bills of lading, false passenger lists, and, for the really sophisticated, falsifying deebee programs. All it took were contacts and money."

"Amanda decided that if these people were God’s choice for instruments, then God was as crazy as Father Emil."

"She had to believe it; nothing else was bearable. Kaufman was looking at self-delusion in a character strong enough to elevate it to madness."

"Science should remain above politics, if it’s to do its job."

"By pure chance then, by pure chance now. Unfair. But he’d always known that was true of the universe."

"Kaufman’s fault. He had not planned, had not seen far enough ahead. Failure of vision was a sin the universe did not forgive."

"History isn’t morality."

"It takes two people to make a human tie. But only one to break it."

"You have a sacred duty to put your magic in the world. Your voice matters"

"And my biggest error starting out was being afraid to be genuinely myself and put myself out there."

"I don’t really believe in mistakes because our missteps are often our greatest teachers."

"I am living proof that you may be shy, introverted or maybe even a bit anxious and can still put your voice in the world. Your voice matters."

"You are not in competition with anyone else in life. You get to run your own race."

"If you have medicine that could change someone’s life, you are honor-bound to share it."

"The Mafia liked the book. They come out looking good. Of course, it's a romantic novel and the Mafia is romanticized."

"I thought of it as a man's book. I have no idea why women like it, too. The book is an ironic commentary on romantic love. The whole concept of romantic love for women is very phony. They really don't want to be considered delicate vessels any more."

"I think of Wall Street guys as the crookedest in the world... They're [judges] the most corrupt part of the system... [The Catholic Church is] the worst influence on all civilization — they're against everything."

"I'm fascinated by the movies simply because it is an enormous machine for making money and no matter how badly they run it, it still makes money. It's the perfect industry to put your nephew in and your idiot cousin, because they'll be geniuses."

"The horse's head in the producer's bed was totally my imagination. I made it up based on Sicilian folklore. In the old days, they would kill a man's favorite animal and hang it up as a warning."

"There is brutality in abundance, but there is also a sickening justification and glorification of a detestable regime. Everything is brutal. Sex is abundant; it is not love, just animality, except in a few instances."

"This is a big, turbulent, highly entertaining novel with ingredients that should assure it a place on the bestseller lists: ample sex, a veritable orgy of bloodshed in many exotic forms, and several characters titillatingly reminiscent of real-life public figures."

"I try to read The Godfather by Mario Puzo every year. It's such a terrific book. I feel it really says something about America."

"If anyone wants to know about the power of the Mafia—its ruthlessness, its immunity to prosecution—read The Godfather; Mario Puzo's brawling, irresistible tale brings the reality home more vividly and realistically than the drier stuff of fact ever can. The Godfather is loaded with the kind of sexual scenes, plots and counter-plots, murder and gore that seem to be requirements for a novel today. All of this might well have made it a work of cheap sensationalism, but The Godfather is deeply imbedded in reality, and this sense of reality pervades the torrent of unending action."

"Even though I am hurt that Mario Puzo had to write a novel as potentially defaming to Italian Americans as The Godfather, I admit that every page of it touches me in a way that Tom Sawyer could never do. While I can find much to identify with in Mark Twain's writings, Puzo's characters are so real to me that I am almost embarrassed to read about them."

"[The Godfather is] bound to be hugely successful, and not simply because the Mafia is in the news. Mr. Puzo's novel is a voyeur's dream, a skillful fantasy of violent personal power without consequences. The victims of the Corleone 'family' are hoods, or corrupt cops—nobody you or I would actually want to know. Just business, as Don Vito would say, not personal. You never glimpse regular people in the book, let alone meet them, so there is no opportunity to sympathize with anyone but the old patriarch, as he makes the world safe for his beloved 'family'."

"Here is all the classic material of Mafia mythology, which is exactly how Puzo treats his story. As an author he is the epitome of omniscience, narrating his tale like an old man telling stories of the "good old days" around a Sicilian hearth, in clear, simple prose... Right up to the end, it seems, Puzo never lost his sneaking desire to believe in a pastoral paradise governed by harsh but fair feudal robber barons – as realistic a myth as any."

"Mario Puzo is not the best novelist in the world, nor the most sensitive, nor certainly the most realistic. But he is without doubt one of the most ambitious. In "The Godfather," Puzo sets himself two excruciatingly difficult tasks: to humanize the Mafia and to make a fortune. He succeeded on both counts. Somehow, Puzo has managed to make his fictional Mafia overlord into a kindly, somewhat puritanical old gentleman with moral scruples about the drug business — and to make himself (Puzo) a cool three-quarters of a million dollars in the process... It was all done with mirrors — and some of the most readable writing since the well-plotted novel went out of style."

"Puzo performs a neat trick; he makes Don Vito a sympathetic, rather appealing character... The deep strength of the narrative comes from...a conviction that street justice is more equal and more honest than the justice preached in the courts."

"[Puzo] was clearly a writer of unusual talent and one looked forward to what he might come up with next... The Godfather is a brutal disappointment. It is quite simply, a package for bestsellerdom: huge, vulgar and sensational, it has all the formula requirements."

"Never mind that they ought to know better by now. They're reviewing the money again and not the book. This time it's...a knowing, muscular, many charactered, and—what's worse—absolutely readable New York folk-tale about the Mafia. Granted, The Godfather does ask for it in a way, with almost $500,000 in advance from hardcover, paperback and movie rights; consider what book reviews usually pay and you'll see why a book like this so easily brings out the worst sort of moral indignation in so many critics... He's got to be just another literary crapshooter who's made the Big Killing overnight. The trouble with all that, of course, is that "overnight" happened to be 20 years. During that time, Puzo wrote three books in which he painstakingly and shrewdly set his wit to mastering about as much as a man needs to know about the craft of writing fiction. With his second novel, The Fortunate Pilgrim, he had, in fact, nailed down a solid name for himself as a good but little known (and therefore uncorrupted, right?) chronicler of Italian-American life. Now Puzo is making money from his writing. So naturally he's only writing in order to make money. You don't have to be a Sicilian to enjoy a vendetta."

"Bart, the hairdresser, sassed the customers when he wasnt clowning or reciting brash tales about his private life. The customers seemed to enjoy it."

"Mrs. H., the seamstress, and her mysterious husband whom nobody had everseen, it was assumed that he was bedridden, since the dressmaker frequently would excuse herself, saying, "Would you mind if I just take a look in at Mr. H?" There really was no Mr. H. The backroom contained nothing but a bed, and a chiffonier, on whose flat top stood a decanter, bearing the inscription "Gin" and wearing around it's neck a tag, "Henry Hanse." No one and nothing else occupied the room but an easel; on it reposed a portrait of a youngish man wearing a very tall collar and a large stickpin in his tie."

"No one would suppose that they were mother and daughter and few really knew. Sometimes her mother introduced her as her sister; more often, as a young friend."

"Every day he expected to find in his mail an anonymous letter, beginning "It may interest you to know that your wife...""

"Throughout the afternoon, the woman's voice had been seldom heard. With her pale clean hands curved around the rolled papers on her lap, she sat on a folding chair beside the dusty filing cabinets. More frequently than she spoke, she uttered a succession of dry sounds, clearing her throat. Behind the desk, the red-haired man in shirt sleeves, with tie and collar loosened, was reading aloud in a voice that matched his imperturbable expression. He looked up from his letters only when the man sitting on the window sill interrupted him with an explosive comment. (first lines)"

""Why don't you marry me?" "Because I don't want to. I don't want to marry any one." She felt stifled and ill, and she pushed him away, saying irritably: "Anyway, you're a Fascist, too." (Chapter 6, p106)"

"...she stayed behind in the vestibule of the train, leaning against the wall in an effort to knit together her nerves before she faced the others. (Chapter seven, p107)"

"He warned himself: the one luxury you can't afford is to lose your temper, understand? (Chapter Ten, p169)"

"he thought: this is it. I heard about it; read about it; now I am seeing it. For us, perhaps, there may be only the threat of the men outside. For the others, the threat has become the act. The sequence is manifest, he thought: first, the handful of deputies, next, the organized band of vigilantes, and, finally, the uniformed army of storm troopers. As it happened in Italy, as it happened in Germany, as it is happening in Spain. Now I have had the unclean thing flung into my face. Did I love my own land so much that I thought it could remain undefiled? Did the signs before me in my part of the country appear so faint that I hoped they could easily be washed away? Very well. Now I know; and never will forget and never will stop fighting it. They won't let us have our way of salvation, will they? The corners of his jaw muscles bulged out. While we try to bring it about through love and cooperation, they crush us. They are the law-breakers. They don't give a hang for man-made laws. They never heard of our Father's law that we live together as His children. They use their money and their power, he thought, to degrade other men, like those poor hirelings riding outside, bought by the pro-consuls of the steel and textile corporations. I say that they are making monsters of one set of men in order to crush another set of men. Laws will not stop them, now I know, or reform them, since they admit no laws. We must stop them. Submission won't stop them, he told himself; that's what they want. Jesus didn't teach submission; He taught a morality of initiative. Jesus would have known at once that their violence can be defeated only by action. Very well. Now I know. (Chapter 13, p241)"

""God-damn! keep your trap shut," he said and blew a suffocating plume of corn whiskey breath into the minister's face. "They ain't nobody going to hear you except us who are going to teach you that whites in the South are not allowed to wallow with niggers and hogs." Shoemaker made no reply. He recrossed his arms, pressing them tight against his chest, thinking: I didn't know men could be so mean. (Chapter 13, 258)"

"The two men, leaning against the billboard in the vacant corner lot, had not spoken for the past fifteen minutes. Victor Hoge was gouging splinters out of a wooden stick with seamed and cracked hands that had not become accustomed to idleness. Jean Boileau, younger, had learned in the last few months, in his cell, in the courtroom and now in his liberty pending appeal, how to remain immobile. Yet it was he who spoke first."

"The rush of cold air and the buzz of voices woke Pop from his doze. "What's that, what's that?" he said testily, leaning forward in the Morris chair that he would not let Joanna sell. (first lines of "King Lear in Evansville")"

"More women than men came down the gang-plank, many of them wearing trousers with ill-fitting overcoats buttoned around them. In the harsh noon light, they appeared to have a curious kinship. They all looked as though something had been chilled inside of them and then hollowed out. Although some were shouting, like the men and women on the pier, although some were hysterical, like the men and women crowding around the plank, although some were dazed, there was a difference between them and the persons who awaited them. Some cheerful, recognizable human quality had been subtracted from them. They were the second group of survivors from the Matrix, the pleasure ship that had gone to the bottom before it had even reached Caribbean waters. (beginning of "To Be Alive")"

"We are entering a new period in the history of the American melting pot. Immigration has stopped, for one thing, and assimilation has begun. A bigger factor, however, is the great social change going on in America, a process that inevitably lines up the poor against the money-bags, the trade unionists against the exploiters, the men who battle for human rights against those who fight for property rights. Race lines vanish in such a conflict; the class issue cuts through everything. Even the Negro question is affected and will finally be settled as this fight goes on; and this question is surely the touchstone of all racial problems in America."

"This bourgeois form of art for art's sake is no longerworthy of one's comment or attack. It has only one useful purpose that I can still see: it numbs the minds of the exploiters. Let them continue to support it and be stultified."

"If Hitler consolidates his power we will see a world reaction infinitely worse than that which followed the events of 1848. Every sign of the faintest liberalism amongst the middle class intellectuals will be drowned in blood. The workers will be massacred, terrorized, forced into a medieval serfdom. It is war-time. We must close ranks or be annihilated. Hitlerism will spread over Europe and sweep America. Unless we unite. Unless there is a united front of all the workingclass parties and liberal groups. The Socialists and liberals may form such a front, leaving out the Communists. They may piously ignore the massacre of Communists, deeming themselves more respectable and hence safer. But this is a form of suicide, for Mr. Villard will find himself consigned to the hangman by an American Hitler as swiftly as any Communist. Every anti-fascist is needed in this united front. There must be no base factional quarrels. Leaders who stand in the way of a united front should be swept aside by the rank and file. We are faced with the death of the whole workingclass movement. We cannot waste time. We cannot quibble. How can anyone underestimate this thing? But I feel an apathy in America, a failure to react to the events in Germany that is appalling. Forward to the united front! There need be no hypocrisy or ignoring of basic differences. Each party and each group can retain its individuality. But at once! Let us unite to fling back Hitlerism and crush it forever!"

"Without an understanding of the economic basis of war, no one can be its determined or effective opponent. Sentimental appeals will not hold back a nation inflamed by patriotic lies. Only the man who understands clearly that he is being asked to die for J. P. Morgan's investments abroad, or the markets of the oil and machinery trusts, will be immune to the customary lies about small nations, enemy atrocities, or democracy. That is why it is so necessary to spread a knowledge of Marxian economies; that is why it is so necessary to maintain a clear-cut Marxian platform in politics, based on the realities of the class war. Prepare for the next war! Prepare by studying Marx and Lenin, by studying the Russian Revolution. Prepare to fight Wall Street, instead of dying to protect its wealth. Inoculate yourself against the liberals who will want to lead you into another capitalist war for whatever holy and subtle reason. Prepare against the Walter Lippmanns, the Rabbi Stephen Wises, the Woodrow Wilsons, Spargoes, Bohns, Scheidemanns, Eberts, Kropotkins, Albert Thomases, Arthur Hendersons, of the next war. They are in your midst now; ask them what they will do, SPECIFICALLY, when the nation is mobilized. Prepare."

"War may have depended at times in the feudal past on the whim of emperors and kings. Today it is a respectable part of Big Business. It is as premeditated as a selling campaign by a large corporation. It is the last resort of national salesmanship."

"The idea of money is so dominant in this country that anyone not part of money is made to feel ashamed."

"I have chosen the Communist discipline. Because Communism projects into the future, and not into the past, as does Fascismo, which is only a defense corps trying to save the rottenness of the past."

"There will be another World War soon. Everything we think and do in the next decade will fall within that shadow, as Walt Whitman's generation fell under the Civil War. There is no escape; there is no alternative for the writer as for other men, but struggle or suicide. One will be forced into an attitude. I prefer life. It is life that has created the Communist movement, with a philosophy so tragic and honest that it can face the thought of the next world war, prepare for it, and go on building. No prayers, or pieties, or hocus-pocus of Fascist rhetoric but the habit of facing every day the hardest facts of life; building with them, seeing beyond them, using them for a great new objective. That is the way to write well, and it is Communism."

"The dark ages had returned; modern thought was again burning in the flames of a new inquisition, the Jews again afflicted with the yellow badge of shame."

"Hitler is a demagogue who has falsified history. He succeeds because his followers are too ignorant to know that he lies. The great mass of Jews in the world today are not millionaire bankers, but paupers and workers. I have told in my book a tale of Jewish poverty in one ghetto, that of New York. The same story can be told of a hundred other ghettoes scattered over all the world. For centuries the Jew has lived in this universal ghetto. Yiddish literature is saturated with the ghetto melancholy and poverty. And Jewish bankers are fascists everywhere. Hitler has received their support, both with money and ideas. Some of his most important secret conferences were held in the home of a Jewish banker. They gave large sums to his party before he came to power. Hitler's whole program is to save the banking and profiteering capitalist system. The attack on the Jews is merely a piece of demagogy, to throw the hungry German masses off the trail of their real enemy. No, every Jew is not a millionaire. The majority of Jews belongs to the working-class and to the bankrupt lower middle class. It is natural that in the present hour so many of them are to be found in the Socialist, Communist and trade union ranks. Jewish bankers are fascists; Jewish workers are radicals; the historic class division is true among the Jews as with any other race."

"It has become necessary now in America to fight against this great fascist lie. Recently, groups of anti-Semitic demagogues have appeared in this country. They are like Hitler, telling the hungry American people that capitalism is Jewish, and that an attack on the Jews is the best way of restoring prosperity. What folly! What criminal deception and bloody fraud! And there are signs that this oldest of swindles will grow in America. The defense of the Jewish race against these fascist liars and butchers has become one of the most necessary tasks for every liberal and radical. This is not only a problem for Jews to meet; it has become the problem of the workers and farmers whose hunger the fascists try to appease with the empty husk of anti-Semitism."

"Mike Gold's initiation into the radical movement occurred in 1914 when he blundered into an unemployment demonstration in Union Square, listened to the "rebel girl" Elizabeth Gurley Flynn, and bought a copy of The Masses. Between 1915, when he contributed his first poem to Eastman's magazine, and 1921, when he joined the editorial staff of The Liberator, Gold lived the wandering and exciting life of the Bohemian-anarchist artist. He wrote three one-act plays for the Provincetown Players and spent a summer with the happy and hard-drinking group at the Cape. In New York, after attending rehearsals at the Provincetown Playhouse, he would join Eugene O'Neill and anarchist friends at a saloon on the corner of Fourth Street and Sixth Avenue, the "Hell Hole," and listen to O'Neill recite "The Hound of Heaven." Dorothy Day, a "rebel girl" of the Village and, later, the much-admired and selfless editor of the Catholic Worker, remembers at this time that she and Gold were reading Tolstoy together. "He used to make fun of my religious spirit," she wrote later, "but he himself was in sympathy with the Christianity expressed by Tolstoi, a religion without churches or a priesthood. Mike had a religious upbringing in his home on the East Side and liked to sing Yiddish folksongs and Hebrew hymns.""

"Gold is important to recover because he is one of dozens, hundreds of writers whose legacy and output was silenced by the Red Scare and Cold War. Gold’s project was to create a working-class literature written for, by, and about working-class people, and Gold understood that a working-class literature would also have to be a radical literature, and a racial literature. And he understood that such a project required conflict with a literary establishment. It would mean a literary class war."

"Creativity could be described as letting go of certainties."

"Ah, mastery ... what a profoundly satisfying feeling when one finally gets on top of a new set of skills ... and then sees the light under the new door those skills can open, even as another door is closing."

"If women had wives to keep house for them, to stay home with vomiting children, to get the car fixed, fight with the painters, run to the supermarket, reconcile the bank statements, listen to everyone’s problems, cater the dinner parties, and nourish the spirit each night, just imagine the possibilities for expansion — the number of books that would be written, companies started, professorships filled, political offices that would be held, by women."

"The perceptions of middle age have their own luminosity."

"Would that there were an award for people who come to understand the concept of enough. Good enough. Successful enough. Thin enough. Rich enough. Socially responsible enough. When you have self-respect, you have enough; and when you have enough, you have self-respect."

"When I was a child I saw the sea burn. How often I have thought that sentence but with no page to set it on, no place to make it mine. As I sit and write, my words fly off the page. I think of geese lumbering into the wind. Or paper kites men have held in their hands, stretched taut over wind, over water, lit by the half darkness. But the darkness turns into barbed wire. In reaching for the past I am forced to crawl through it."

"It seems to me that in its rhythms the poem, the artwork, can incorporate scansion of the actual, the broken steps, the pauses, the blunt silences, the brutal explosions. So that what is pieced together is a work that exists as an object in the world but also, in its fearful consonance, its shimmering stretch, allows the world entry. I think of it as a recasting that permits our lives to be given back to us, fragile, precarious."

"Migrancy, a central theme for many of us in this shifting world, forces a recasting of how the body is grasped, how language works. Then, too, at the heart of what happens in these sometimes jagged reflections of mine, is the question of postcolonial memory. ("Overture: Another Voice")"

"How can I make a durable past in art, a past that is not merely nostalgic, but stands in vibrant relation to the present? This is the question that haunts me. (beginning of "A Durable Past")"

"Through speech, the entanglement of thoughts and feelings might be unwound, the truth permitted to shine, however fitfully. (beginning of "Erupting Words")"

"The act of writing, it seems to me, makes up a shelter, allows space to what would otherwise be hidden, crossed out, mutilated. Sometimes writing can work toward a reparation, making a sheltering space for the mind. Yet it feeds off ruptures, tears in what might otherwise seem a seamless, oppressive fabric. more?? (from "Piecemeal Shelters")"

"As the condition of migration and cultural displacement comes to be seen as a metaphor of our times, Meena Alexander's poignant and perceptive book is a welcome addition. Here, the postcolonial condition is addressed in its variety and its particularity: as fiction, criticism, personal reflection. This is a compelling, subtly crafted performance."

"At once violent, erotic, and somber, Manhattan Music is infused with the power of myth and poetry and the inner life, the electric intersection of characters who illuminate for the reader both the Old World and the New."

"Meena Alexander sings of countries, foreign and familiar places where the heart and spirit live, and places for which one needs a passport and visas. Her voice guides us far away and back home. The reader sees her visions and remembers and is uplifted."

"Meena Alexander has written a fierce new complexity into questions of identity, diaspora, tradition, language, and community. This is a powerful fusion of poetic vision and critical thinking."

"Meena Alexander's acute poetic sensibility makes this memoir a joy to read. At the same time, the writing is grounded enough to evoke the earthier loam of violence and reality."

"In concrete imagery and intellectual passion, Alexander is full of surprises. These are haunting texts of hybrid America."