Women authors from the United States

"I never met anyone who didn't have a very smart child. What happens to these children, you wonder, when they reach adulthood?"

"There's no such thing as advice to the lovelorn. If they took advice, they wouldn't be lovelorn. You see, advice and lovelorn don't go together. Because advice makes love sound like some sort of cognitive activity, but we know that it isn't. We all know that it's some sort of horrible chemical reaction over which we have absolutely no control. And that's why advice doesn't work."

"Should novels generally be 600 pages? No, they should not. Half of writing, maybe 3/4 of writing, is editing. This seems to be a thing that has not gotten through to them. It’s my impression that you could get rid of half of most of these books. These people are not good enough to be this long, but they’re apparently also not good enough to be shorter."

"I doubt there’s ever been a true thing said on Fox. Maybe the weather report, maybe not."

"Most of my news, I get from the radio news stations. One of the stations' advertising lines is "Give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world." In 22 minutes, they just have time for the headlines, so they can only really tell you what happened — which, by the way, is the news. They tell you how many people were killed in Iraq today, but they don’t then bring on some Republican senator to explain to you how that’s good. Or, on the contrary, they don’t bring in a bunch of Democrats to tell you why it’s bad. They just tell you what happened. That’s the news. I am capable of analyzing my own news. What makes these people qualified to analyze my news for me? No matter what side they’re on, I never agree with them."

"Take away a man’s actual sense of manhood — which is conventionally based on the ability to work, to earn money, to be self-sufficient, to provide for children — and you’ve got to give them something else. And they did.This hideous religion that’s all over the country — these huge church-malls — that’s what substitutes for these lost towns. But that’s not a town. That’s a cult. A town is diverse, in a real way, not in this fake way we have now. A community is a butcher and a doctor, a minister, a town troublemaker. A "community" is not a bunch of people united by some grievance. That’s just self-righteousness — incredibly dangerous and antidemocratic. People have become so rigid; their opinions seem to them like themselves. When that happens (and it has happened) people can’t change their minds. If you are identified by your opinions — if that is the very basis of yourself — how can you change your mind?"

"The terrible state of public education has paid huge dividends in ignorance. Huge. We now have a country that can be told blatant lies — easily checkable, blatant lies — and I’m not talking about the covert workings of the CIA. When we have a terrorist attack, on September 11, 2001 with 19 men — 15 of them are Saudis — and five minutes later the whole country thinks they’re from Iraq — how can you have faith in the public? This is an easily checkable fact. The whole country is like the O.J. Simpson jurors."

"All God's children are not beautiful. Most of God's children are, in fact, barely presentable. The most common error made in matters of appearance is the belief that one should disdain the superficial and let the true beauty of one's soul shine through. If there are places on your body where this is a possibility, you are not attractive — you are leaking."

"Rome is a very loony city in every respect. One needs but spend an hour or two there to realize that Fellini makes documentaries."

"Any child who cannot do long division by himself does not deserve to smoke."

"I love sleep because it is both pleasant and safe to use. Pleasant because one is in the best possible company and safe because sleep is the consummate protection against the unseemliness that is the invariable consequence of being awake. What you don't know won't hurt you. Sleep is death without the responsibility."

"Life is something to do when you can't get to sleep."

"Bread that must be sliced with an ax is bread that is too nourishing."

"Women who insist on having the same options as men would do well to consider the option of being the strong, silent type."

"Having been unpopular in high school is not just cause for book publication."

"If your sexual fantasies were truly of interest to others, they would no longer be fantasies."

"Being a woman is of special interest only to aspiring male transsexuals. To actual women it is simply a good excuse not to play football."

"Radio news is bearable. This is due to the fact that while the news is being broadcast the disc jockey is not allowed to talk."

"Original thought is like original sin: both happened before you were born to people you could not have possibly met."

"The conversational overachiever is someone whose grasp exceeds his reach. This is possible but not attractive."

"The opposite of talking isn't listening. The opposite of talking is waiting."

"Do not elicit your child's political opinions. He doesn't know any more than you do."

"Children do not really need money. After all, they don't have to pay rent or send mailgrams."

"Ask your child what he wants for dinner only if he's buying."

"Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only lead to unreasonable expectations and eventual disappointment when your child discovers that the letters of the alphabet do not leap up out of books and dance around the room with royal-blue chickens."

"Do not allow children to mix drinks. It is unseemly and they use too much vermouth."

"No animal should ever jump up on the dining room furniture unless absolutely certain that he can hold his own in the conversation."

"Remember that as a teenager you are in the last stage of your life when you will be happy to hear the phone is for you."

"Should you be a teenager blessed with uncommon good looks, document this state of affairs by the taking of photographs. It is the only way anyone will ever believe you in years to come."

"Stand firm in your refusal to remain conscious during algebra. In real life, I assure you, there is no such thing as algebra."

"Think before you speak. Read before you think. This will give you something to think about that you didn't make up yourself - a wise move at any age, but most especially at seventeen, when you are in the greatest danger of coming to annoying conclusions."

"I understand, of course, that many people find smoking objectionable. That is their right. I would, I assure you, be the very last to criticize the annoyed. I myself find many-- even most-- things objectionable. Being offended is the natural consequence of leaving one's home. I do not like aftershave lotion, adults who roller-skate, children who speak French, or anyone who is unduly tan. I do not, however, go around enacting legislation and putting up signs. In private I avoid such people; in public they have the run of the place. I stay at home as much as possible, and so should they. When it is necessary, however, to go out of the house, they must be prepared, as I am, to deal with the unpleasant personal habits of others. That is what "public" means."

"How do you know if your child is a writer? Your obstetrician holds his stethoscope to your abdomen and only hears excuses."

"I myself hate that old Hemingwayesque paradigm of the writer as prizefighter and I have tried hard to create an alternate one for myself. When Anne Sexton admonished me, "We are all writing God's poem," I took it to mean there should be no competition between writers because we are all involved in a common project, a common prayer. But to Gore's and Norman's generation, particularly those male writers who served in the second world war, the prizefighter paradigm remains."

"I have had the experience of having my sister get up at a meeting at Columbia University, where these scholars from all over the world were anointing Fear of Flying as a classic. And my sister got up and said, "Erica Jong has ruined my life — with her books.""

"My advice to a young writer: Never give up. Read everything you can read — particularly the writers who move you deeply. Study how they do what they do. Read and read and read ... and write and write and write."

"Underneath it all, you longed to be annihilated by love..."

"Each one an antidote to the one that went before. Each one a reaction, an about-face, a rebound."

"The zipless fuck is absolutely pure. It is free of ulterior motives. There is no power game. The man is not "taking" and the woman is not "giving." No one is attempting to cuckold a husband or humiliate a wife. No one is trying to prove anything or get anything out of anyone. The zipless fuck is the purest thing there is. And it is rarer than the unicorn. And I have never had one."

"Pregnancy seemed like a tremendous abdication of control. Something growing inside you which would eventually usurp your life."

"I'm just trying to lead my own fucking life if I can manage to find it in all this confusion."

"Dancing is like fucking... it doesn't matter how you look - just concentrate on how you feel."

"I want you. I want you. I want you. Anything to avoid saying: I love you."

"The ultimate sexist put-down: the prick which lies down on the job."

"Silence is the bluntest of blunt instruments."

"I'm very dependant. I fall apart regularly."

"Sheer bitchiness can be a sort of style."

"It's only when you're forbidden to talk about the future that you suddenly realize how much the future normally occupies the present."

"Exceptional people are often called crazy by the ordinary world."

"Everyone's a little crazy when you get inside their head... it's only a matter of degree."

"I convinced myself that sadness and compromise were the ways of the world..."

"Having a baby with him meant marrying that face forever."

"All people believe their suffering is greater than others."

"Humor is a survival tool."

"How could one create life with someone who represented death?"

"Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile."

"My body was flesh, which was only one step removed from shit, from clay, from dust."

"Keeping a journal implies hope."

"The worst thing about jealousy is how low it makes you reach."

"And what if I don't want forgiveness?"

"Advice is what we ask for when we already know the answer but wish we didn't..."

"Friends love misery... our misery is what endears us to our friends."

"It takes a spasm of love to write a poem."

"They all cheat sooner or later. You might as well have one who isn't a bore the rest of the time."

"...jealousy makes the prick grow harder. And the cunt wetter."

"Love is love, but marriage is an investment."

"Unhappiness is our element. We come to believe we can't function without it."

"Without sex it would be so easy to choose appropriate people to live with. Sex was the joker in an otherwise rational deck."

"Loving someone is a loss of freedom -- but one doesn't think of it as loss because one gains so much else."

"There is a rhythm to the ending..."

"Many people today believe that cynicism requires courage. Actually, cynicism is the height of cowardice. It is innocence and open-heartedness that requires the true courage -- however often we are hurt as a result of it."

"If you apologize for something that isn't your fault in the first place, you, in effect, confirm their belief that it is your fault."

"Is perception equivalent to existence?"

"Photographs... are the most curious indicators of reality."

"...the ocean kept falling into itself, gathering itself up, and falling into itself again."

"The future is merely a shadow which blocks out the joys of the present and emphasizes the miseries of the past."

"What was the point of spending your life with someone you were always looking for ways to deceive?"

"I only know that in our choice of friends and lovers and teachers who will change our lives, we are guided by forces which have nothing to do with the rationalizations we give."

"Jealousy is all the fun you think they had."

"Pain is not love. Love flowers; love gives without taking; love is serene and calm."

"Driving me away is easier than saying goodbye..."

"Betrayal does that -- betrays the betrayer."

"It is our old love I love."

"I look forward and see myself look back."

"In loving life you love what can't survive..."

"Why does life need evidence of life?"

"I am not sure if love is a salve or just a deeper kind of wound."

"...I am sure that when we love we are better than ourselves and when we hate, worse."

"The best slave does not need to be beaten. She beats herself."

"Birth is the start of loneliness and loneliness the start of poetry..."

"Since flesh can't stay, we pass the words along."

"Hate generalizes; love is particular."

"Because I loved myself, I was loved."

"...if you don't risk anything, you risk even more."

"For women writers the systematic discouragement even to attempt to become writers has been so constant and pervasive a force that we cannot consider their literary productions without somehow assessing the effects of that barrage of discouragement."

"For women writers the systematic discouragement even to attempt to become writers has been so constant and pervasive a force that we cannot consider their literary productions without somehow assessing the effects of that barrage of discouragement. Often discouraged in the home, often at school, often by families and spouses, the rare woman writer who does not lose her determination along the way is already a survivor. That one should next have to face the systematic discouragement of a male-oriented literary establishment is absurd and sad but nonetheless a real fact of life for many women writers.* (No one has chronicled this repression better than Tillie Olsen in her splendid book Silences (1978).) The truth is that many of us are doomed to do our best work in an atmosphere of condescension and loneliness. Yet perhaps there is some sense in which that lack of establishment approval is a blessing, for an artist must learn (the sooner the better) that he or she works for the work itself, not for approval, and it is easier to establish that sense of creative independence when approval is lacking than when one is seduced by it."

"school is a microcosm of our society's values."

"Sexism is somewhat better hidden now-though it is far from eradicated."

"when I go to read my work at colleges, I find the students reading and discussing contemporary writing by women as if there never had been a time when a Distinguished Critic could say "Women can't be writers"-even in jest. I am grateful and glad for that change, but it has not been won without pain."

"Nothing is more destructive of the spirit and ultimately of creativity than false meekness, anger that does not know its own name. And nothing is more freeing for a woman (or for a woman writer) than giving up the pleasures of masochism and beginning to fight. But we must always remember that fighting is only a first step. As Virginia Woolf points out in A Room of One's Own, many women's books have been destroyed by the rage and bitterness at their own centers. Rage opens the doors into the spirit, but then the spirit must be nurtureed."

"The myths about women were mostly ways of keeping us out of touch with our own strength, and this confused many generations of women."

"when I look back on the years since I left college, and I try to sum up what I have learned, it is precisely that: not to fear change, not to expect my life to be immutable."

"Every poem, every page of fiction I have written, has been written with anxiety, occasionally panic, always uncertainty about its reception."

"As a writer, I feel that the very source of my inspiration lies in my never forgetting how much I have in common with other women, how many ways in which we are all-successful or not-similarly shackled. I do not write about superwomen who have transcended all conflict; I write about women who are torn, as most of us are torn, between the past and the future, between our mothers' frustrations and the extravagant hopes we have for our daughters. I do not know what a writer would write about if all her characters were superwomen, cleansed of conflict. Conflict is the soul of literature."

"I would like to see a world in which male writers wrote without masculinist bias, in which for example Hemingway's masculinist mythology (and that of many other contemporary American male writers) was perceived as quite as bizarre and hysterical as the most absurd excesses of militant feminist fiction, and in which consciousness had become so truly androgynous that the adjective itself would be puzzlingly obsolete."

"The human need for companionship and sexuality is far stronger than any intellectual theory"

"Righteousness has no place in literature. Of course the keen observer of her culture will feel deeply about the oppression she sees around her, the inhumanity of man to man, of man to woman, but her vision of it must be essentially personal, not abstractly political."

"I must gratefully acknowledge that the second wave of the feminist movement liberated my writing and was a liberating influence upon my whole life. How? Not by supplying me with dogma, but by making it easier for me to look into myself and assume that what I felt as a woman was also shared by other women (and men). For one of the most positive by-products of the so-called second wave of the feminist movement was its discovery of a new audience of readers-readers both female and male-who came to realize that literary history as we previously knew it was the history of the literature of the white, the affluent, the male, and that the female side of experience had been almost completely omitted (except as seen through the eyes of the traditional victors in the war between the sexes-men)."

"My job is not to paralyze myself by anticipating judgment but to do the best I can and let the judgment fall where it may."

"No one ever found wisdom without also being a fool."

"It seems to me that having now created an entire literature of female rage, an entire literature of female introspection, women writers are ready to enter the next phase-the phase of empathy. Without forgetting how hard-won our rage was, without forgetting how many puritanical voices would still like to censor our sexuality, I think we must consider ourselves free to explore the whole world of feeling in our writings-and not to be trapped forever in the phase of discovering buried anger...The time has come to let go of that rage; the time has come to realize that curiosity is braver than rage, that exploration is a nobler calling than war."

"Never follow a dog act. You know you're on the skids when you play yourself in the movie version of your life."

"Many contemporary women writers and artists have attempted to work with new images drawn from an explicitly feminist consciousness or from a female sensibility pulled from the experiences of daily life and made explicit in the context of the women's liberation movement. The struggle to do this requires both the break-up of the interior colonization and the actualization of a women-centered reality. Erica Jong described this process in her own work as she came of age as a writer in the 1970s: "I spent my whole bookish life identifying with writers and nearly all the writers who mattered were men. Even though there were women writers and even though I read them and loved them, they did not seem to matter. If they were good, they were good in spite of being women. If they were bad, it was because they were women. I had, in short, internalized all the dominant cultural stereotypes, and the result was that I could scarcely even imagine a woman as an author." Once Jong could name the problem, however, and see herself as a writer, the content of her work changed: "I stopped writing about ruins and nightingales. I was able to make poetry out of the everyday activities of my life: peeling onions, a trip to the gynecologist, a student demonstration, my own midnight terrors and dreams-all things I would have previously dismissed as trivial.""

"(Did you every read Fear of Flying?) G.P.: Well, that's another book that I really read part of several times and couldn't really finish. I thought it could have been done a lot faster and shorter…But again, that book was very important to a lot of women. I respect those facts, when people feel like that. I don't think it's just pure popularity; I don't think it's just that they were sold…But those books, those two books [The Women's Room and Fear of Flying], really were very important for lots of women."

"Erica Jong's Fanny is a marvelous, robust, funny book."

"... Jong presented millions of women readers with the possibility of — the great joys of — agency in place of soporific and joyless passivity in life and, of course, sex."

"(Which subjects do you wish more authors would write about?) Money. White authors often write about money (or don’t) in a way that disregards the realities of most people. It’s as if they assume that everyone simply has it. Or at least their readers. I remember reading “Fear of Flying,” by Erica Jong, many years ago, for instance, and getting very angry when the protagonist went to Europe for months with no concern for money or a job. I assumed she was relying on family money, but it was never explained. It took me out of the text because I couldn’t get over it. Maybe it’s because I grew up working class and money was a factor in everything we did. Marginalized people could never in their wildest dreams make these kinds of choices."

"Whatever an author puts between the two covers of his book is public property; whatever of himself he does not put there is his private property, as much as if he had never written a word."

"Every person is responsible for only the good within his abilities, and for no more, and no one can tell whose sphere is the largest."

"The total depravity of inanimate things."

"Old man, forswear that dogged rumba Go home and yield to Christian slumba."

"Fashion makes the fur fly."

"Women's desire is a mysterious, feral thing, and if you think you've got it figured out because you've looked at a few Georgia O'Keeffe paintings, you're not even close."

"We've moved away from being a culture of people who think about movies to one made up of people who believe that spouting a list of preferences is the same as registering an opinion."

"You can talk film theory till you're blue in the face, but in the end, the thing that may haunt you most about a movie is a pair of eyes."

"Everything about Pee-Wee's Big Adventure, from its toy-box colors to its superb, hyper-animated Danny Elfman score to the butch-waxed hairdo and wooden-puppet walk of its star and mastermind is pure pleasure."

"It would be destined for the trash heap of Shakespeare adaptations, if not for its female lead, and its heart, 17-year-old Claire Danes."

"[Director James] Cameron manhandles the real story, scavenging it for his own puny narrative purposes. It's a film made with boorish confidence and zero sensitivity, big and dumb and hulking."

"It's mournful and troubling in a way that goes beyond ordinary movie manipulation. It burns clean."

"It's a movie barely fit for a cretin, much less a King. ... If you hear a door slam in the theater, you'll know that Elvis has left the building -- in disgust."

"Who would have thought that [director] Cameron Crowe had a movie as bad as Vanilla Sky in him? It's a punishing picture, a betrayal of everything that Crowe has proved he knows how to do right."

"I can't remember ever feeling so glad that a movie was finally over. [Director George] Lucas may have held my imagination hostage for two hours, but reclaiming it afterward wasn't hard at all."

"Monster is a compassionate picture without any obvious agenda. And it's effective precisely because it's not a polemic."

"Oldboy makes us feel a part of something bigger than ourselves. It's a grand, gritty, indelible experience, the sort of picture that mimics great literature in the way it envelops you in a well-told story while also evoking subtle but strong gradations of emotion."

"This film Phantom takes everything that's wrong with Broadway and puts it on the big screen in a gaudy splat."

"While 9 Songs is sexually explicit in the basic sense, its directness is what's most fascinating, and ultimately most moving, about it."

"Batman Begins leaks existential phoniness from the first frame."

"I suspect this picture is pretty close to what fans were hoping for, and for their sake, I'm glad it's markedly better than the two that preceded it. But Revenge of the Sith is still crap."

"Extravagant in movie terms but stingy in emotional ones, it embodies all of [director Steven] Spielberg's bad impulses and almost none of his good ones: It's a grand display of how well he knows how to work us over, and yet the desperation with which he tries to get to us is repulsive."

"This is a sturdy little cop thriller, and even when it stretches the bounds of plausibility, you go with it, partly because you believe -- almost against your better judgment -- in what the characters are doing."

"Children of Men is a solemn, haunting picture, but it's also a thrilling one, partly because of the sheer bravado with which it's made. It left me feeling more fortified than drained. [Director Alfonso] Cuarón, the most openhearted of directors, prefers to give rather than take away."

"[I]t's guilty of the very thing that makes kids hate history as a subject when it's taught badly: The Da Vinci Code makes the past feel like a dull, grainy, faraway thing, instead of something vibrant and alive."

"Pan's Labyrinth works on so many levels that it seems to change shape even as you watch it. It is, at times, a joyless picture, and its pall of sadness can begin to weigh you down."

"The bigger question to ask about 300 is why, for a supposedly rousing tale of heroism, it's so curiously unaffecting."

"The scariest thing in it may be the way the clock radio has a way of turning itself on, loudly, of its own accord. The song is always the Carpenters' "We've Only Just Begun." Now that's horror."

"The most interesting character here is an animal, a sturdy-looking white and black bulldog, who appears throughout the movie, angel style, to speak the truth -- silently. In this load of mind-bendy bushwa, he's the only thing worth watching, or listening to."

"There are epic impulses everywhere you look in There Will Be Blood; what's missing is character development, focused storytelling and, most significantly (apart from that terrific opening sequence), any sense of raw, intuitive drama."

"This sprawling epic is as lively as a natural history museum diorama."

"[I]t pretends to examine how self-absorbed we are as a culture, only to be consumed by its own self-absorption. It's also badly constructed, humorless and emotionally sadistic."

"[Director Christopher] Nolan ... gives us enough multilayered subplots to at least fool us into thinking this is a work of intellectual and moral complexity. But as a piece of visual storytelling, from shot to shot, The Dark Knight is a mess. Characters disappear from one locale and show up inexplicably in another, thanks to the magic of editing. At one point, we learn two characters have been abducted, but Nolan doesn't bother to show us who did it or how. (Later, he explains the "who did it" with dialogue -- the lazy way.) At the end, a major character is left hanging, literally, as we are figuratively. If this is genius, give me hackery."

"It's impossible to tell what's going on at any given moment in Tomb of the Dragon Emperor; it's even harder to care about being able to tell."

"This isn't a picture filled with wonder and a sense of fun; it's so jaded and crass that I almost wonder if it's a highly unscientific experiment designed to gauge how little audiences will settle for these days. Manic and multicolored, Speed Racer is an excess of nothingness."

"Despite the bare butts and crude sex jokes -- or because of them -- this Adam Sandler vehicle addresses some of the biggest political problems of our time. ... At the very least, it's got to be the first picture to use smelly-feet jokes as a means of parsing the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But more than that, it's a mainstream movie that dares to make jokes about the kinds of complex political realities that most of us don't dare bring up at dinner parties."

"It's time to start recognizing that not all escapist entertainment is created equal. And that some of it isn't even entertainment. Miss March is, to use the vernacular of the escapist moviegoer, the biggest pile of crap I've seen in ages."

"It's possible [director Jody] Hill has a style, of sorts. But he doesn't work from the heart, or from the gut, as a good comedy director generally needs to. He operates from one guiding question: "How disturbing can we make this shit?""

"What sense of superiority it gives one to escape reading some book which every one else is reading."

"Truly nothing is to be expected but the unexpected."

"Ah done been in sorrow's kitchen and Ah done licked out all de pots. Ah done died in grief and been buried in de bitter waters, and Ah done rose agin from de dead lak Lazarus."

"Gods always behave like the people who make them."

"I accept this idea of democracy. I am all for trying it out. It must be a good thing if everybody praises it like that. If our government has been willing to go to war and sacrifice billions of dollars and millions of men for the idea I think that I ought to give the thing a trial. The only thing that keeps me from pitching head long into this thing is the presence of numerous Jim Crow laws on the statute books of the nation. I am crazy about the idea of Democracy. I want to see how it feels."

"I am colored but I offer nothing in the way of extenuating circumstances except the fact that I am the only Negro in the United States whose grandfather on the mother's side was not an Indian chief."

"I am not tragically colored. There is no great sorrow dammed up in my soul, nor lurking behind my eyes. I do not mind at all. I do not belong to that sobbing school of Negrohood who hold that nature somehow has given them a lowdown dirty deal. Even in the helter-skelter skirmish that is my life, I have seen that the world is to the strong regardless of a little pigmentation more or less. No, I do not weep at the world — I am too busy sharpening my oyster knife."

"Sometimes, I feel discriminated against, but it does not make me angry. It merely astonishes me. How can any deny themselves the pleasure of my company? It is beyond me. But in the main, I feel like a brown bag of miscellany propped against a wall. Against a wall in company with other bags, white, red and yellow. Pour out the contents, and there is discovered a jumble of small things priceless and worthless. A first-water diamond, an empty spool, bits of broken glass, lengths of string, a key to a door long since crumbled away, a rusty knife-blade, old shoes saved for a road that never was and never will be, a nail bent under the weight of things too heavy for any nail, a dried flower or two still a little fragrant. In your hand is the brown bag. On the ground before you is the jumble it held — so much like the jumble in the bags, could they be emptied, that all might be dumped in a single heap and the bags refilled without altering the content of any greatly. A bit of colored glass more or less would not matter. Perhaps that is how the Great Stuffer of Bags filled them in the first place — who knows?"

"Ships at a distance have every man's wish on board."

"Well, Ah see Mouth-Almighty is still sittin' in de same place. And Ah reckon they got me up in they mouth now.""Yes indeed. You know if you pass some people and don't speak tuh suit 'em dey got tuh go way back in yo' life and see whut you ever done. They know mo' 'bout yuh than you do yo' self. They done 'heard' 'bout you just what they hope done happened.""If God don't think no mo' 'bout 'em than Ah do, they's a lost ball in de high grass."

"Janie saw her life like a great tree in leaf with the things suffered, things enjoyed, things done and undone. Dawn and doom was in the branches."

"After a while she got up from where she was and went over the little garden field entire. She was seeking confirmation of the voice and vision, and everywhere she found and acknowledged answers. A personal answer for all other creations except herself. She felt an answer seeking her, but where? When? How?"

"‘So de white man throw down de load and tell de nigger man tuh pick it up. He pick it up because he have to, but he donʼt tote it. He hand it to his womenfolks. De nigger woman is de mule uh de world so fur as Ah can see.’"

"There are years that ask questions and years that answer."

"The years took all the fight out of Janie’s face. For a while she thought it was gone from her soul."

"When God had made The Man, he made him out of stuff that sung all the time and glittered all over. Then after that some angels got jealous and chopped him into millions of pieces, but still he glittered and hummed. So they beat him down to nothing but sparks but each little spark had a shine and a song. So they covered each one over with mud. And the lonesomeness in the sparks make them hunt for one another, but the mud is deaf and dumb. Like all the other tumbling mud-balls, Janie had tried to show her shine."

"‘But youʼse takinʼ uh awful chance.’ ‘No moʼ than Ah took befoʼ and no moʼ than anybody else takes when dey gits married. It always changes folks, and sometimes it brings out dirt and meanness dat even de person didnʼt know they had in ʼem theyselves.’"

"All gods who receive homage are cruel. All gods dispense suffering without reason. Otherwise they would not be worshipped. Through indiscriminate suffering men know fear and fear is the most divine emotion. It is the stones for altars and the beginning of wisdom. Half gods are worshipped in wine and flowers. Real gods require blood."

"The wind came back with triple fury, and put out the light for the last time. They sat in company with the others in other shanties, their eyes straining against crude walls and their souls asking if He meant to measure their puny might against His. They seemed to be staring at the dark, but their eyes were watching God."

"Then you must tell ’em dat love ain’t somethin’ lak uh grindstone dat’s de same thing everywhere and do de same thing tuh everything it touch. Love is lak de sea. It’s uh movin’ thing, but still and all, it takes its shape from de shore it meets, and it’s different with every shore."

"It’s uh known fact, Pheoby, you got tuh go there tuh know there. Yo’ papa and yo’ mama and nobody else can’t tell yuh and show yuh. Two things everybody’s got tuh do fuh theyselves. They got tuh go tuh God, and they got tuh find out about livin’ fuh theyselves."

"Of course he wasn't dead. He could never be dead until she herself had finished feeling and thinking. The kiss of his memory made pictures of love and light against the wall. Here was peace. She pulled in her horizon like a great fish-net. Pulled it from around the waist of the world and draped it over her shoulder. So much of life in its meshes! She called in her soul to come and see."

"Mama exhorted her children at every opportunity to "jump at de sun." We might not land on the sun, but at least we would get off the ground."

"Research is formalized curiosity. It is poking and prying with a purpose. It is a seeking that he who wishes may know the cosmic secrets of the world and they that dwell therein."

"If you haven’t got it, you can’t show it. If you have got it, you can’t hide it."

"Love, I find is like singing. Everybody can do enough to satisfy themselves, though it may not impress the neighbors as being very much."

"there certainly have been excellent storytellers and writers within anthropology. That’s one of the reasons I co-edited the book Women Writing Culture (1996) because I was really interested in finding the canon of women writers within anthropology who had written well. Anthropologists like Ella Deloria, Zora Neale Hurston, and Barbara Myerhoff, among others, have been amazing writers."

"Things get so wrapped up into what someone is...I mean, in minority groups, whether they adhere to a genre. It's like the genre is making them, instead of them making literature. And Zora Neale Hurston is a good example of someone who's suffered because of that. That's why she got lost for so many years. She was uncompromising and did what she thought was right, and there were Black writers during the Harlem Renaissance who rejected her because they thought she was... well, you hear these strange things, like they said she was "too loud," which I don't understand. What does that mean? On the one hand, she was accused of playing up to whites; on the other hand, she did these wonderful anthropological studies of folk tales in her book Mules and Men. A lot of the misunderstanding about Zora Neale Hurston comes from the fact that people were trying to fit her into some existing pigeonhole. And she resisted that."

"I see the "choral" first chapter of Hurston's Their Eyes Were Watching God as a great exercise in writing multiply, voicing a community."

"“Their Eyes Were Watching God,” which I read for the first time only five years ago, and which made me fall in love with Zora Neale Hurston. I was knocked out by her eye for detail, her rigorous use of formal and vernacular languages and the depth of her narrative perspectives. Since then, I’ve read her stories and essays and found her throughout to be an independent thinker."

"Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism. This is particularly true for black women writers who have refused to be delineated by male-establishment models of femininity, and who have dealt with their sexuality as an accepted part of their identity. For instance, where are the women writers of the Harlem Renaissance being taught? Why did it take so long for Zora Neale Hurston to be reprinted?"

"God is sitting here, looking into my very soul to see if I think right thoughts. Yet I am not afraid, for I try to be right and good; and He knows every one of my struggles."

"Friday I tasted life. It was a vast morsel. A circus passed the house — still I feel the red in my mind though the drums are out. [...] The lawn is full of south and the odors tangle, and I hear to-day for the first the river in the tree."

"My friends are my "estate." Forgive me then the avarice to hoard them."

"I had no portrait, now, but am small, like the Wren, and my Hair is bold, like the Chestnut Bur — and my eyes, like the Sherry in the Glass, that the Guest leaves — Would this do just as well?"

"If I read a book [and] it makes my whole body so cold no fire can ever warm me, I know that is poetry. If I feel physically as if the top of my head were taken off, I know that is poetry. These are the only ways I know it. Is there any other way?"

"To live is so startling, it leaves but little room for other occupations."

"We turn not older with years, but newer every day."

"No approximate words in a poem."

"A Grave – is a restricted Breadth – Yet ampler than the Sun – And all the Seas He populates And lands he looks uponTo Him who on its small Repose Bestows a single Friend – Circumference without Relief – Or Estimate – or End –"

"A death-blow is a life-blow to some Who, till they died, did not alive become; Who, had they lived, had died, but when They died, vitality begun."

"A little Madness in the Spring Is wholesome even for the King."

"A solemn thing - it was - I said - A Woman - white - to be - And wear - if God should count me fit - Her blameless mystery -"

"After great pain, a formal feeling comes - The Nerves sit ceremonious, like Tombs - The stiff Heart questions 'was it He, that bore,' And 'Yesterday, or Centuries before'?"

"This is the Hour of Lead - Remembered, if outlived, As Freezing persons, recollect the Snow - First - Chill - then Stupor - then the letting go -"

"Because I could not stop for Death – He kindly stopped for me – The Carriage held but just Ourselves – And Immortality.We slowly drove – He knew no haste And I had put away My labor and my leisure too, For His Civility –"

"We passed the School, where Children strove At Recess – in the Ring –"

"Since then – 'tis Centuries – and yet Feels shorter than the Day I first surmised the Horses' Heads Were toward Eternity –"

"Bless God, he went as soldiers, His musket on his breast; Grant, God, he charge the bravest Of all the martial blest.Please God, might I behold him In epauletted white, I should not fear the foe then, I should not fear the fight."

"Could Hope inspect her Basis Her Craft were done – Has a fictitious Charter Or it has none –Balked in the vastest instance But to renew – Felled but by one assassin – Prosperity –"

"Dreams – are well – but Waking's better, If One wake at Morn – If One wake at Midnight – better – Dreaming – of the Dawn –"

"Drowning is not so pitiful As the attempt to rise. Three times, 'tis said, a sinking man Comes up to face the skies, And then declines forever To that abhorred abodeWhere hope and he part company,— For he is grasped of God. The Maker’s cordial visage, However good to see, Is shunned, we must admit it, Like an adversity."

"What fortitude the Soul contains, That it can so endure The accent of a coming Foot - The opening of a Door -"

""Faith" is a fine invention When Gentlemen can see – But Microscopes are prudent In an Emergency."

"Fame is a fickle food Upon a shifting plate, Whose table once a Guest, but not The second time, is set. Whose crumbs the crows inspect, And with ironic caw Flap past it to the Farmer’s corn; Men eat of it and die."

"Fate slew him, but he did not drop; She felled—he did not fall— Impaled him on her fiercest stakes— He neutralized them all.She stung him, sapped his firm advance, But, when her worst was done, And he, unmoved, regarded her, Acknowledged him a man."

"Glee! the great storm is over! Four have recovered the land; Forty gone down together Into the boiling sand.Ring, for the scant salvation! Toll, for the bonnie souls,— Neighbor and friend and bridegroom, Spinning upon the shoals!How they will tell the shipwreck When winter shakes the door, Till the children ask, "But the forty? Did they come back no more?"Then a silence suffuses the story, And a softness the teller's eye; And the children no further question, And only the waves reply."

"Heart, we will forget him! You and I, to-night! You may forget the warmth he gave, I will forget the light.When you have done, pray tell me, That I my thoughts may dim; Haste! lest while you're lagging, I may remember him!"

""Hope" is the thing with feathers – That perches in the soul – And sings the tune without the words – And never stops – at all – And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard – And sore must be the storm – That could abash the little Bird That kept so many warm – I've heard it in the chillest land – And on the strangest Sea – Yet – never – in Extremity, It asked a crumb – of me."

"How happy is the little stone That rambles in the road alone, And doesn't care about careers, And exigencies never fears; Whose coat of elemental brown A passing universe put on; And independent as the sun, Associates or glows alone, Fulfilling absolute decree In casual simplicity."

"I died for Beauty – but was scarce Adjusted in the Tomb, When One who died for Truth, was lain In an adjoining Room – He questioned softly "Why I failed"? "For Beauty," I replied. "And I – for Truth, – Themself are One – We Brethren, are", He said –"

"I heard a Fly buzz – when I died – The Stillness in the Room Was like the Stillness in the Air – Between the Heaves of Storm –"

"There interposed a Fly –With Blue – uncertain – stumbling Buzz – Between the light – and me – And then the Windows failed – and then I could not see to see –"

"I never hear the word "escape" Without a quicker blood, A sudden expectation, A flying attitude.I never hear of prisons broad By soldiers battered down, But I tug childish at my bars,— Only to fail again!"

"I never saw a moor, I never saw the sea; Yet know I how the heather looks, And what a wave must be. I never spoke with God, Nor visited in heaven; Yet certain am I of the spot As if the chart were given."

"I reason, earth is short, And anguish absolute. And many hurt; But what of that?I reason, we could die: The best vitality Cannot excel decay; But what of that?I reason that in heaven Somehow, it will be even, Some new equation given; But what of that?"

"I taste a liquor never brewed - From Tankards scooped in Pearl - Not all the Frankfort Berries Yield such an Alcohol!Inebriate of air - am I - And Debauchee of Dew - Reeling - thro' endless summer days - From inns of molten Blue -"

"I took my power in my hand And went against the world; 'Twas not so much as David had, But I was twice as bold.I aimed my pebble, but myself Was all the one that fell. Was it Goliath was too large, Or only I too small?"

"I took one Draught of Life – I'll tell you what I paid – Precisely an existence – The market price, they said."

"I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you – Nobody – Too?"

"If I can stop one heart from breaking, I shall not live in vain; If I can ease one life the aching, Or cool one pain, Or help one fainting robin Unto his nest again, I shall not live in vain."

"Immortal is an ample word When what we need is by, But when it leaves us for a time, 'Tis a necessity.Of heaven above the firmest proof We fundamental know, Except for its marauding hand, It had been heaven below."

"How dreary – to be – Somebody! How public – like a Frog – To tell one's name – the livelong June – To an admiring Bog!"

"It makes no difference abroad, The seasons fit the same, The mornings blossom into noons, And split their pods of flame.Wild-flowers kindle in the woods, The brooks brag all the day; No blackbird bates his jargoning For passing Calvary.Auto-da-fé and judgment Are nothing to the bee; His separation from his rose To him seems misery."

"It might be easier To fail with land in sight, Than gain my blue peninsula To perish of delight."

"It tossed and tossed,— A little brig I knew,— O'ertook by blast, It spun and spun, And groped delirious, for morn.It slipped and slipped, As one that drunken stepped; Its white foot tripped, Then dropped from sight.Ah, brig, good-night To crew and you; The ocean's heart too smooth, too blue, To break for you."

"It's such a little thing to weep, So short a thing to sigh; And yet by trades the size of these We men and women die!"

"Love is anterior to life, Posterior to death, Initial of creation, and The exponent of breath."

"Love – thou art Veiled – A few – behold thee – Smile – and alter – and prattle – and die – Bliss – were an Oddity – without thee – Nicknamed by God – Eternity –"

"Mine enemy is growing old,— I have at last revenge. The palate of the hate departs; If any would avenge,—Let him be quick, the viand flits, It is a faded meat. Anger as soon as fed is dead; 'Tis starving makes it fat."

"More than the Grave is closed to me – The Grave and that Eternity To which the Grave adheres – I cling to nowhere till I fall – The Crash of nothing, yet of all – How similar appears –"

"Much madness is divinest sense To a discerning eye; Much sense the starkest madness. 'Tis the majority In this, as all, prevails. Assent, and you are sane; Demur,—you're straightway dangerous, And handled with a chain."

"My life closed twice before its close; It yet remains to see If Immortality unveil A third event to me,So huge, so hopeless to conceive As these that twice befell. Parting is all we know of heaven, And all we need of hell."

"My Life had stood – a Loaded Gun – In Corners – till a Day The Owner passed – identified – And carried Me away –And now We roam in Sovereign Woods – And now We hunt the Doe – And every time I speak for Him – The Mountains straight reply –"

"Nature is what we see, The Hill, the Afternoon— Squirrel, Eclipse, the Bumble-bee, Nay—Nature is Heaven.Nature is what we hear, The Bobolink, the Sea— Thunder, the Cricket— Nay,—Nature is Harmony.Nature is what we know But have no art to say, So impotent our wisdom is To Her simplicity."

"New feet within my garden go, New fingers stir the sod; A troubadour upon the elm Betrays the solitude.New children play upon the green, New weary sleep below; And still the pensive spring returns, And still the punctual snow!"

"No rack can torture me, My soul 's at liberty. Behind this mortal bone There knits a bolder oneYou cannot prick with saw, Nor rend with scymitar. Two bodies therefore be; Bind one, and one will flee.The eagle of his nest No easier divest And gain the sky, Than mayest thou,Except thyself may be Thine enemy; Captivity is consciousness, So's liberty."

"Not with a Club, the Heart is broken Nor with a Stone – A Whip so small you could not see it I've knownTo lash the Magic Creature Till it fell, Yet that Whip's Name Too noble then to tell.Magnanimous as Bird By Boy descried – Singing unto the Stone Of which it died –Shame need not crouch In such an Earth as Ours – Shame – stand erect – The Universe is yours."

"One need not be a Chamber – to be Haunted – One need not be a House – The Brain has Corridors – surpassing Material Place –"

"Our journey had advanced; Our feet were almost come To that odd fork in Being's road, Eternity by term.Our pace took sudden awe, Our feet reluctant led. Before were cities, but between, The forest of the dead.Retreat was out of hope,— Behind, a sealed route, Eternity's white flag before, And God at every gate."

"Presentiment is that long shadow on the lawn Indicative that suns go down; The notice to the startled grass That darkness is about to pass."

"Safe in their Alabaster Chambers - Untouched by Morning - And untouched by noon - Sleep the meek members of the Resurrection, Rafter of Satin and Roof of Stone -Grand go the Years, In the Crescent above them - Worlds scoop their Arcs - And Firmaments - row - Diadems - drop - And Doges surrender - Soundless as Dots, On a Disk of Snow."

"So proud she was to die It made us all ashamed That what we cherished, so unknown To her desire seemed.So satisfied to go Where none of us should be, Immediately, that anguish stooped Almost to jealousy."

"Some Days retired from the rest In soft distinction lie, The Day that a companion came— Or was obliged to die."

"Some keep the Sabbath going to Church – I keep it, staying at Home – With a Bobolink for a Chorister – And an Orchard, for a Dome –"

"God preaches, a noted Clergyman – And the sermon is never long, So instead of getting to Heaven, at last – I'm going, all along."

"Surgeons must be very careful When they take the knife! Underneath their fine incisions Stirs the culprit,—Life!"

"The Bustle in a House The Morning after Death Is solemnest of industries Enacted upon Earth -The Sweeping up the Heart And putting Love away We shall not want to use again Until Eternity -"

"Success is counted sweetest By those who ne'er succeed. To comprehend a nectar Requires a sorest need.Not one of all the purple Host Who took the Flag today Can tell the definition So clear of VictoryAs he defeated – dying – On whose forbidden ear The distant strains of triumph Burst agonized and clear!"

"Tell all the Truth but tell it slant – Success in Circuit lies Too bright for our infirm Delight The Truth's superb surpriseAs Lightning to the Children eased With explanation kind The Truth must dazzle gradually Or every man be blind –"

"That such have died enables us The tranquiller to die; That such have lived, certificate For immortality."

"The blunder is to estimate,— "Eternity is Then," We say, as of a station. Meanwhile he is so near, He joins me in my ramble, Divides abode with me, No friend have I that so persists As this Eternity."

"A Vastness, as a Neighbor, came, A Wisdom, without Face, or Name, A Peace, as Hemispheres at Home And so the Night became."

"The distance that the dead have gone Does not at first appear; Their coming back seems possible For many an ardent year.And then, that we have followed them We more than half suspect, So intimate have we become With their dear retrospect."

"The face we choose to miss, Be it but for a day— As absent as a hundred years When it has rode away."

"The grass so little has to do,— A sphere of simple green, With only butterflies to brood, And bees to entertain,And stir all day to pretty tunes The breezes fetch along, And hold the sunshine in its lap And bow to everything;And thread the dews all night, like pearls, And make itself so fine,— A duchess were too common For such a noticing.And even when it dies, to pass In odors so divine, As lowly spices gone to sleep, Or amulets of pine.And then to dwell in sovereign barns, And dream the days away,— The grass so little has to do, I wish I were a hay!"

"If Aims impel these Astral Ones The ones allowed to know Know that which makes them as forgot As Dawn forgets them – now"

"The pedigree of honey Does not concern the bee; A clover, any time, to him Is aristocracy."

"The Soul selects her own Society – Then – shuts the Door – To her divine Majority – Present no more –"

"I've known her – from an ample nation – Choose One – Then – close the Valves of her attention – Like Stone –"

"The sweets of Pillage can be known To no one but the Thief, Compassion for Integrity Is his divinest Grief."

"There is a solitude of space, A solitude of sea, A solitude of death, but these Society shall be, Compared with that profounder site, That polar privacy, A Soul admitted to Itself: Finite Infinity."

"There is a word Which bears a sword Can pierce an armed man. It hurls its barbed syllables,— At once is mute again. But where it fell The saved will tell On patriotic day, Some epauletted brother Gave his breath away.Wherever runs the breathless sun, Wherever roams the day, There is its noiseless onset, There is its victory! Behold the keenest marksman! The most accomplished shot! Time's sublimest target Is a soul "forgot"!"

"There's a certain Slant of light, Winter Afternoons - That oppresses, like the Heft Of Cathedral Tunes -Heavenly Hurt, it gives us - We can find no scar, But internal difference - Where the Meanings, are -"

"They shut me up in Prose - As when a little Girl They put me in the Closet - Because they liked me "still" -Still! Could themself have peeped - And seen my Brain - go round - They might as wise have lodged a Bird For Treason - in the Pound -"

"This is my letter to the World That never wrote to Me – The simple News that Nature told – With tender Majesty Her Message is committed To Hands I cannot see – For love of Her – Sweet – countrymen – Judge tenderly – of Me"

"This quiet dust was gentlemen and ladies And lads and girls; Was laughter and ability and sighing, And frocks and curls."

"To Whom the Mornings stand for Nights, What must the Midnights – be!"

"Truth – is as old as God – His Twin identity And will endure as long as He A Co-Eternity –And perish on the Day Himself is borne away From Mansion of the Universe A lifeless Deity."

"Upon the gallows hung a wretch, Too sullied for the hell To which the law entitled him. As nature’s curtain fell The one who bore him tottered in, For this was woman’s son. "'Twas all I had," she stricken gasped; Oh, what a livid boon!"

"We outgrow love, like other things And put it in the Drawer – Till it an Antique fashion shows – Like Costumes Grandsires wore."

"What Soft – Cherubic Creatures – These Gentlewomen are – One would as soon assault a Plush – Or violate a Star –Such Dimity Convictions – A Horror so refined Of freckled Human Nature – Of Deity – ashamed –"

"Who has not found the Heaven – below – Will fail of it above – For Angels rent the House next ours, Wherever we remove –"

"Who has not found the heaven below Will fail of it above. God's residence is next to mine, His furniture is love."

"Wild nights - Wild nights! Were I with thee Wild nights should be Our luxury!Futile - the winds - To a Heart in port - Done with the Compass - Done with the Chart!Rowing in Eden - Ah - the Sea! Might I but moor - tonight - In thee!"

"Whenever a thing is done for the first time, it releases a little demon."

"In English, you know who I love, and have translated? Emily Dickinson...I translated Dickinson. It came out in the Nuevo Diario a long time ago, in the beginning of the 1980s. I love her very much."

"(What is it about Emily Dickinson that moves you?) Her use of language, certainly. Her solitude, as well, and the style of that solitude. There is something very moving and in the best sense funny. She isn't solemn."

"One who, as a child, knew Emily Dickinson well and loved her much recollects her most vividly as a white, ethereal vision, stepping from her cloistral solitude on to the verandah, daintily unrolling a great length of carpet before her with her foot, strolling down to where the carpet ended among her flowers, then turning back and shutting herself out of the world."

"Dickinson was a woman of privilege who never left her house, nor had to deal with issues beyond which white dress to wear on a given day."

"There is another thing about my childhood that is interesting now, in the light of later happenings. I might have said, with Emily Dickinson: "I never saw a moor,/I never saw the sea;/Yet know I how the heather looks,/And what a wave must be." For I never saw the ocean until I went from college to the marine laboratories at Woods Hole, on Cape Cod. Yet as a child I was fascinated by the thought of it. I dreamed about it and wondered what it would look like."

"Friends dislike being apart. Separation, says Emily Dickinson, is all the Hell we need. Each shared moment is precious. And the only ones who can remember the hour of loneliness are those who survive it."

"No great poet has written so much bad verse as Emily Dickinson...Her coy and oddly childish poems of nature and female friendship are products of a time when one of the careers open to women was perpetual childhood."

"I'm from the Emily Dickinson and Flannery O'Connor school of writing, where you write about your Amherst backyard or about a farm in Milledgevilk, and then you're actually writing about everything it means to be human."

"The complexity of women's undergarments in nineteenth-century America is not to be waved off, and I proceeded like a polar explorer through clips, clasps, and moorings, catches, straps, and whalebone stays, sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness."

"There’s no higher entitlement than thinking that you should live forever, when part of the beauty of nature is that even the stars die. That's what Emily Dickinson said: 'That it will never come again/is what makes life so sweet.' I believe that."

"My mother was the first songwriter I knew; Emily Dickinson was the first poet and my grandmother the first storyteller...From Emily I learned that the immense silences I found within me were navigable by words and metaphor."

"Her poetry is the diary or autobiography — though few diaries or autobiographies compare with it for intentional and, especially, unintentional truth — of an acute psychologist, a wonderful rhetorician, and one of the most individual writers who ever lived, one of those best able to express experience at its most nearly absolute."

"Emily Dickinson is nearly infinite in her expression. She wrote seventeen hundred and seventy-five poems, and they constitute a very rich literature certainly. And she was, God knows, highly imaginative, highly intelligent, highly perceptive, and she had a kind of regard for language that a great writer must have. It was a mystery, a miracle to her. I learned a little something about the mystery and miracle of language by reading her..."

"When I visited Emily Dickinson's house in Amherst, a lively plump robin was sitting on her step, right under the second-story window she would have stared out of."

"Anger has always played a role in poetry...There is much anger in Emily Dickinson, lightly disguised as mockery. "The Bible is an antique volume / Written by faded men," she proclaims."

"Even the best critical writing on Emily Dickinson underestimates her. She is frightening. To come to her directly from Dante, Spenser, Blake, and Baudelaire is to find her sadomasochism obvious and flagrant. Birds, bees, and amputated hands are the dizzy stuff of this poetry. Dickinson is like the homosexual cultist draping himself in black leather and chains to bring the idea of masculinity into aggressive visibility."

"Emily Dickinson is the female Sade, and her poems are the prison dreams of a self-incarcerated, sadmomasochistic imaginist. When she is rescued from American Studies departments and juxtaposed with Dante and Baudelaire, her barbarities and diabolical acts of will become glaringly apparent. Dickinson inherits through Blake the rape cycle of The Faerie Queene. Blake and Spenser are her allies in helping pagan Coleridge defeat Protestant Wordsworth."

"Dickinson's sentimental feminine poems remain neglected by embarrassed scholars. I would maintain, however, that her poetry is a closed system of sexual reference and that the mawkish poems are designed to dovetail with those of violence and suffering."

"I have a notion that genius knows itself; that Dickinson chose her seclusion, knowing she was exceptional and knowing what she needed. It was, moreover, no hermetic retreat, but a seclusion which included a wide range of people, of reading and correspondence. Her sister Vinnie said, "Emily is always looking for the rewarding person." And she found, at various periods, both women and men: her sister-in-law Susan Gilbert, Amherst visitors and family friends such as Benjamin Newton, Charles Wadsworth, Samuel Bowles, editor of the Springfield Republican, and his wife; her friends Kate Anthon and Helen Hunt Jackson, the distant but significant figures of Elizabeth Barrett, the Brontës, George Eliot. But she carefully selected her society and controlled the disposal of her time. Not only the "gentlewomen in plush" of Amherst were excluded; Emerson visited next door but she did not go to meet him; she did not travel or receive routine visits; she avoided strangers. Given her vocation, she was neither eccentric nor quaint; she was determined to survive, to use her powers, to practice necessary economies."

"Emily Dickinson — viewed by her bemused contemporary Thomas Higginson as "partially cracked," by the twentieth century as fey or pathological — has increasingly struck me as a practical woman, exercising her gift as she had to, making choices."

"She was always stirred by the existences of women like George Eliot or Elizabeth Barrett, who possessed strength of mind, articulateness, and energy. (She once characterized Elizabeth Fry and Florence Nightingale as "holy" — one suspects she merely meant, "great.")"

"Emily Dickinson's strictness, sometimes almost a slang of strictness, speaks with an intellectually active, stimulated quick music."

"Emily Dickinson, whose unappeasable thirst for fame was itself unknown for years after her death, had to fight through her family — "Vesuvius at home" — until a miserable lawsuit and the theft of a manure pile interrupted the posthumous publication of her work, and postponed for forty-nine years what may be her finest book."

"The growth of entrepreneurial classes throughout the world is an asset in the promotion of human rights and individual liberty, and it should be understood and used as such. Yet peace is the first and most important condition for continued prosperity and freedom. America's military power must be secure because the United States is the only guarantor of global peace and stability. The current neglect of America's armed forces threatens its ability to maintain peace."

"But in terms of Saddam Hussein being there, let's remember that his country is divided, in effect. He does not control the northern part of his country. We are able to keep arms from him. His military forces have not been rebuilt."

"If you have any doubt about the degree with which this is self-defense, just look at those pictures from September 11th."

"I don't think that anybody could have predicted that these people would take an airplane and slam it into the World Trade Center, take another one and slam it into the Pentagon, that they would try to use an airplane as a missile"

"This is your baby. Go do it."

"In light of 50 years of bondage of Eastern Europe, [invading the Soviet Union in 1948 to prevent it from acquiring nuclear weapons] was probably a reasonable thing to do."

"Punish France, ignore Germany, and forgive Russia."

""Protests are a part of our democratic heritage and our democratic privilege ... US and British efforts in Afghanistan and Iraq] are finally getting those countries to the place that actually people might have the same privilege of protest". The Guardian, 2003-11-15"

"Oh, indeed there is a tie between Iraq and what happened on 9/11. It's not that Saddam Hussein was somehow himself and his regime involved in 9/11, but, if you think about what caused 9/11, it is the rise of ideologies of hatred that lead people to drive airplanes into buildings in New York."

"...it is a longstanding principle that sitting national security advisers do not testify before the Congress."

"As I was telling my husb— As I was telling President Bush."

"We are at war, and our security as a nation depends on winning that war."

"Condoleezza Rice: But I don't remember the al‐Qaeda cells as being something that we were told we needed to do something about. Richard Ben-Veniste: Isn't it a fact, Dr. Rice, that the August 6 PDB [Presidential Daily Briefing] warned against possible attacks in this country? And I ask you whether you recall the title of that PDB? Condoleezza Rice: I believe the title was, Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States."

"People may oppose you, but when they realize you can hurt them, they'll join your side."

"The United States doesn't and can't condone torture. And I want to make very clear that that's the view and the policy of the administration, the policy of the president, and that he's made very clear to American personnel that we will not condone torture....Senator, under no circumstances should we or have we condoned torture. And the president has been very clear that he expects everyone to live up to our international obligations and to American law."

"Senator, I'm happy to continue the discussion, but I really hope that you will not imply that I take the truth lightly."

"You see, this war came to us, not the other way around."

"And so the administration, I think, has said to the American people that it is a generational commitment to Iraq."

"When are we going to stop making excuses for the terrorists and saying that somebody is making them do it? No, these are simply evil people who want to kill."

"I have no doubt that as the Iraqi security forces get better, and they are getting better and they are holding territory and they are doing these things with minimal help, that we are going to be able to bring down the levels of our forces. And I have no doubt that that's going to happen in a reasonable time frame."

"I think the word of the United States has been as good as gold in its international dealings and its agreements."

"Well, that's not how I read the statement ... After all, do Iraqis really want to -- any Iraqi, sitting around that table, want to suggest that killing an innocent Iraqi child standing at a bus stop is legitimate? Or that killing Iraqi soldiers who are lining up at recruitment centers is legitimate? Or even that multinational forces -- who by the way are there under a UN mandate -- are somehow legitimate targets?"

"The United States government does not authorise or condone torture of detainees. Torture, and conspiracy to commit torture, are crimes under US law, wherever they may occur in the world."

"These people are making a choice for peace and that means that the time is coming in which this insurgency will have no foothold, in which it will be defeated, defeated by Iraqis and in which we can fully come home."

"Sometimes people decide to write reports even though they haven't been to Guantanamo. And so I would just suggest that people look at some of the work that's been done by people who have been there. But that's not to say that we will not be very glad at the day that conditions permit the closure of Guantanamo and the trying of its inhabitants or for their release."

"You are a good friend and we welcome you."

"You see, education is transformational. It literally changes lives. That is why people work so hard to become educated and that is why education has always been the key to the American Dream, the force that erases arbitrary divisions of race and class and culture and unlocks every person's God-given potential."

"We have had some bad incidents and there continue to be allegations of others which will be investigated; but overwhelmingly American forces there, putting their lives on the line every day, protecting Iraqis, helping to liberate them, that is appreciated by the Iraqi people and by the Prime Minister."

"I don't know anyone who is more admired and respected in the international community than President Karzai, for his strength, for his wisdom and for his courage to lead this country, first in defeat of the Taliban and now a democratic and unified Afghanistan. And I can tell you I am with foreign ministers and with heads of state all over the world. I sit in the councils of NATO. I sit with the EU. I sit with people all over the world and there is great admiration for your president and also for what the Afghan people are doing here."

"There is no political cause that can justify the murder of innocent people. The United States stands with India in the war against terror. Those responsible for these terrible acts should be swiftly brought to justice."

"...those hostilities were not very well contained, as we found out on September 11th, and so the notion that somehow policies that finally confront extremism are actually causing extremism I find grotesque."

"The United States has been very clear that we did have to have some political basis to make clear that that cessation of hostilities was not going to countenance a return to the status quo ante. This resolution does that. And now we're going to see who is for peace and who isn't."

"...there have been plenty of markers that show that this is a country that is worth the investment because once it emerges as a country that is a stabilizing factor, you'll have a very different kind of Middle East. And I know that from the point of view of not just monetary costs, but the sacrifice of American lives, a lot has been sacrificed for Iraq, a lot has been invested in Iraq."

"It's bad policy to speculate on what you'll do if a plan fails, when you're trying to make a plan work."

"My Fox guys, I love every single one of them."

"Ron Paul: We are escalating our sharp rhetoric toward Iran, We're deploying additonal carrier group and Patriot missiles to the region. And, although Iran has approached the United States to establish serious dialog two times since 9/11, they have been rebuffed both times... Condelezza Rice: ...When we have a carrier strike group into the gulf, or provide PAC-3, which is a defensive system, it's simply to demonstrate that the United States remains determined to defend its interests in the gulf, and the interests of its allies. And that, congressman, is a position that has been held by American presidents going back for nearly 60 years. I would just note that these are discrete responses to Iranian activities that are really deeply concerning, not just for us, but for the rest of the world as well. Now as to Tehran, and whether we can talk to them. I offered in May to reverse 27 years of American policy, and to meet my counterpart any place, any time, to talk about any set of issues that Iran wishes to talk about, if they would just do one thing. And that is, adhere to the demand that the international community is making, that they stop enrichment and reprocessing, so that we that while we're talking, they're not improving their capability to get a nuclear weapon. So I think, congressman, the question isn't why won't we talk to Tehran, the question is why won't they talk to us."

"I do believe that the president of Venezuela is really, really destroying his own country, economically, politically."

"...the consolidation of a stable and democratic Iraq after the overthrow of Saddam Hussein is a part of what America owes to the Iraqi people, owes to the region, and owes to ourselves so that our own security is there. Chris, it would be like saying that after Adolf Hitler was overthrown, we needed to change then the resolution that allowed the United States to do that so that we could deal with creating a stable environment in Europe after he was overthrown."

"Condoleezza Rice: I think that these historical circumstances require a very detailed and sober look from historians and what we've encouraged the Turks and the Armenians to do is to have joint historical commissions that can look at this, to have efforts to examine their past and, in examining their past, to get over their past. Adam Schiff: ...you come out of academia... is there any reputable historian you're aware of that takes issue with the fact that the murder of 1.5 million Armenians constituted genocide? Condoleezza Rice: Congressman, I come out of academia, but I'm secretary of state now and I think that the best way to have this proceed is for the United States not to be in the position of making this judgment, but rather for the Turks and the Armenians to come to their own terms about this. Adam Schiff: ...Why is it only this genocide? Is it because Turkey is a strong ally? Is that an ethical and moral reason to ignore the murder of 1.5 million people? Why is it we don't say, "Let's relegate the Holocaust to historians" or "relegate the Cambodian genocide or Rwandan genocide ?" Why is it only this genocide that we should let the Turks acknowledge or not acknowledge? Condoleezza Rice: Congressman, we have recognized and the president recognizes every year in a resolution that he himself issues the historical circumstances and the tragedy that befell the Armenian people at that time... Adam Schiff: ...You recognize more than anyone, as a diplomat, the power of words. And I'm sure you supported the recognition of genocide in Darfur, not calling it tragedy, not calling it atrocity, not calling it anything else, but the power and significance of calling it genocide. Why is that less important in the case of the Armenian genocide? Condoleezza Rice: Congressman, the power here is in helping these people to move forward... And, yes, Turkey is a good ally and that is important. But more important is that like many historical tragedies, like many historical circumstances of this kind, people need to come to terms with it and they need to move on. Adam Schiff: ...Iran hosts conferences of historians on the Holocaust. I don't think we want to get in the business of encouraging conferences of historians on the undeniable facts of the Armenian genocide."

"I'm very glad that there was, in fact, a consequence. I think that this kind of coarse language doesn't belong anywhere in reasonable dialogue between reasonable people. ... It gets ruined by this disgusting -- and I'll use the word 'disgusting' -- comment which doesn't belong in any polite company and certainly doesn't belong on any radio station that I would listen to."

"Now, six years ago, al-Qaeda was planning to attack the Twin Towers. It wasn't a very nice world. And I think that if you think about six years ago, al-Qaida was preparing to attack the Twin Towers, Pakistan was allied with the Taliban, Afghanistan was the base from which al-Qaida was going to operate; the Israelis and the Palestinians had given up on a chance for -- or let me put it, the Palestinians had walked away from a chance for a Palestinian state, launched the second intifada, elected Ariel Sharon who basically said there would never be a Palestinian state and there will be a greater Israel; the North Korean were cheating on a deal that they had just signed; China and others were indifferent to that because it was a U.S.-North Korea bilateral deal; Iran was cheating on the IAEA out of sight. I could go on and on and on. That was the world in 2000 and 2001. And there is no doubt that by confronting -- oh, by the way, and Saddam Hussein was shooting at our pilots regularly in the no-fly zone and making a mockery of the Oil-for-Peace -- Oil-for-Food program and corruption was running rampant in that program. So, a worse world? I think so."

"I'm a terrible long-term planner."

"This test has much in common with the other great challenges that are defining this young century -- from weapons proliferation, to the spread of disease, to transnational terrorism. These are truly global problems, and no one nation, no matter how much power or political will it possesses, can succeed alone. We all need partners, and we all need to work in concert."

"In any country, if you don't have countervailing institutions, the power of any one president is problematic for democratic development."

"At no time did I intend to, or do I believe that I did put forward false information to the American people."

"...I am proud of the decision of this Administration to overthrow Saddam Hussein. I am proud of the liberation of 25 million Iraqis. And I'm proud to see an Iraq that is now emerging with a stronger government, a truly multiethnic, multi-sectarian government that's about to have its second set of elections, that's inviting private investment into Iraq, and that is making peace with its Arab neighbors."

"This is not 1968 and the invasion of Czechoslovakia, where Russia can threaten its neighbors, occupy a capital, overthrow a government, and get away with it. Things have changed."

"In terms of the enhanced interrogation and so forth, anything that was legal and was going to make this country safer, the president wanted to do. Nothing that was illegal. And nothing that was going to make the country less safe. Unless you were there, in a position of responsibility after September 11th, you cannot possibly imagine the dilemmas that you faced in trying to protect Americans. You were determined to do anything that you could that was legal to prevent that from happening again... We were told, nothing that violates our obligations under the Convention Against Torture. And so, by definition, if it was authorized by the president, it did not violate our obligations under the Conventions Against Torture."

"There’s no greater challenge and there is no greater honor than to be in public service."

"In response to a question about what "keeps her up at night", I worry about the fact that in K-12 education I can look at your zip code and tell whether or not you're going to get a good education."

"The essence of America – that which really unites us — is not ethnicity, or nationality or religion – it is an idea — and what an idea it is: That you can come from humble circumstances and do great things. That it doesn’t matter where you came from but where you are going."

"In February 2005 the American secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, came to Paris to consolidate the improvement in relations between the White House and the Élysée a er the crisis over Iraq. Speaking at the Institut d'études politiques, in the heart of the Saint-Germain-des Prés quarter of Paris, she referred to the mission of the democracies, which is to spread freedom and bring down tyrannies: “We know,” she said, “that we have deal with the world as it is, but we do not have to accept the world as it is.” The French press was astonished and suggested that she had gotten carried away, gone to extremes. This was a strange amnesia, since with these simple words Rice reminded the French, who had forgotten it, of the message of the Revolution of 1789. In this sense, America, although we constantly demonize it, still defends the democratic treasure that we have repressed or relativized."

"Hi Condoleezza, how are you? You've forgotten about me, my little girl."

"Yes, Leezza, Leezza, Leezza... I love her very much."

"Conflict of interest? Not to the Bush White House, where it was business as usual...Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice served on the board of Chevron for a decade. She has the distinction of being the only cabinet member to have had an oil tanker named after her."

"...the idea that she belongs in front of a war tribunal is not something I can dignify with a response. Miss Rice presides over a wide range of choices, a wide range of policies. She's handled that vast duty with dignity, with honor."

"There are two things people really want to know about the cartoonist Aaron McGruder. The first is precisely what he said to Condoleezza Rice, the US Secretary of State, at an awards ceremony three years ago. Rice and McGruder, 32, were both being given an award by the National Association for the Advancement of Coloured People, the oldest civil rights organisation in the country. Beforehand, McGruder had told anyone who would listen that Rice was a mass murderer (it was not long after the invasion of Afghanistan) and that he would have no qualms about telling her so to her face. With McGruder's help, rumours about their subsequent exchange became legend. "I was never as cavalier with her as I sounded," he says now. "I had a brief encounter with her and I knew I had to say something. I said something like: 'I don't want you guys to kill me so I'm just going to mind my own business.' I was eminently aware when I met Condi that she could make my whole family disappear. I have never been fearless. I've always had a healthy fear of this government.""

"(Do you distrust Black politicians?) Morrison: Nothing is to be expected from politicians like Condoleezza Rice or Colin Powell. They only have the power to negotiate, not to influence. They are a part of the great mass, they're not interested in those who do not belong to the mainstream. They believe people who have money can help, since only with money can one change things, can one achieve social improvements."

"Rice remained pretty embarrassed – in the end she didn't end up voting in favor of a resolution she organized."

"Condoleezza Rice serves an administration that has trashed the basic values of academia: reason, science, expertise, and honesty. Stanford should not welcome her back."

"The Black American struggle for civil rights gave us some of the most magnificent political fighters, thinkers, public speakers, and writers of our times. Martin Luther King, Jr., Malcolm X, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ella Baker, James Baldwin, and of course the marvelous, magical, mythical Muhammad Ali. Who has inherited their mantle? Could it be the likes of Colin Powell? Condoleezza Rice? Michael Powell? They're the exact opposite of icons or role models. They appear to be the embodiment of Black people's dreams of material success, but in actual fact they represent the Great Betrayal. They are the liveried doormen guarding the portals of the glittering ballroom against the press and swirl of the darker races. Their role and purpose is to be trotted out by the Bush administration looking for brownie points in its racist wars and African safaris."

"They are welcome to all the money I have in America. Rice should take half of it to improve the way she looks. She should have her teeth straightened and her face fixed, and should make herself look nice. I donate what is left to George Bush, because I know he will soon be admitted to a mental asylum because of his policies."

"Someone asked me if I wanted to make a New Year's wish, and I said yes — and it was that I'd like to see every young person in the world join the "Just Say No" to drugs club. Well, just the fact that Congress has proclaimed "Just Say No Week" and in light of all the activities taking place, it seems that my wish is well on its way to coming true."

"Our relationship is very special. We were very much in love and still are. Thank God we found each other. When I say my life began with Ronnie, well, it's true. It did. Forty-six years? Can't imagine life without him."

"I must say that acting was good training for the political life that lay ahead of us."

"I don't intend for this to take on a political tone. I'm just here for the drugs."

"I am a big believer that you have to nourish any relationship. I am still very much a part of my friends' lives and they are very much a part of my life. A First Lady who does not have this source of strength and comfort can lose perspective and become isolated."

"The time for a woman to serve as our President has come – really, now is the time — and I think the idea of having a former First Lady as the leader of the free world is really quite a marvelous notion. I want Hillary to win. Even though I admire two of the current potential Republican nominees, I have no interest in seeing either of them lead this country."

"As a mother, I've always thought of September as a special month, a time when we bundled our children off to school, to the warmth of an environment in which they could fulfill the promise and hope in those restless minds. But so much has happened over these last years, so much to shake the foundations of all that we know and all that we believe in. Today there's a drug and alcohol abuse epidemic in this country, and no one is safe from it — not you, not me, and certainly not our children, because this epidemic has their names written on it. Many of you may be thinking: "Well, drugs don't concern me." But it does concern you. It concerns us all because of the way it tears at our lives and because it's aimed at destroying the brightness and life of the sons and daughters of the United States."

"For 5 years I've been traveling across the country — learning and listening. And one of the most hopeful signs I've seen is the building of an essential, new awareness of how terrible and threatening drug abuse is to our society. This was one of the main purposes when I started, so of course it makes me happy that that's been accomplished. But each time I meet with someone new or receive another letter from a troubled person on drugs, I yearn to find a way to help share the message that cries out from them."

"Drugs steal away so much. They take and take, until finally every time a drug goes into a child, something else is forced out — like love and hope and trust and confidence. Drugs take away the dream from every child's heart and replace it with a nightmare, and it's time we in America stand up and replace those dreams. Each of us has to put our principles and consciences on the line, whether in social settings or in the workplace, to set forth solid standards and stick to them. There's no moral middle ground. Indifference is not an option. We want you to help us create an outspoken intolerance for drug use. For the sake of our children, I implore each of you to be unyielding and inflexible in your opposition to drugs."

"Our young people are helping us lead the way. Not long ago, in Oakland, California, I was asked by a group of children what to do if they were offered drugs, and I answered, "Just say no." Soon after that, those children in Oakland formed a Just Say No club, and now there are over 10,000 such clubs all over the country. Well, their participation and their courage in saying no needs our encouragement. We can help by using every opportunity to force the issue of not using drugs to the point of making others uncomfortable, even if it means making ourselves unpopular."

"Our job is never easy because drug criminals are ingenious. They work everyday to plot a new and better way to steal our children's lives, just as they've done by developing this new drug, crack. For every door that we close, they open a new door to death. They prosper on our unwillingness to act. So, we must be smarter and stronger and tougher than they are. It's up to us to change attitudes and just simply dry up their markets."

"And finally, to young people watching or listening, I have a very personal message for you: There's a big, wonderful world out there for you. It belongs to you. It's exciting and stimulating and rewarding. Don't cheat yourselves out of this promise. Our country needs you, but it needs you to be clear-eyed and clear-minded. I recently read one teenager's story. She's now determined to stay clean but was once strung out on several drugs. What she remembered most clearly about her recovery was that during the time she was on drugs everything appeared to her in shades of black and gray and after her treatment she was able to see colors again. So, to my young friends out there: Life can be great, but not when you can't see it. So, open your eyes to life: to see it in the vivid colors that God gave us as a precious gift to His children, to enjoy life to the fullest, and to make it count. Say yes to your life. And when it comes to drugs and alcohol just say NO."

"In 1981, when Ronnie and I moved to Washington, I never dreamed that our eight years there would be a time of so much emotion. But life in the White House is magnified: The highs were higher than I expected, and the lows were much lower. While I loved being first lady, my eight years with that title were the most difficult years of my life. Both of my parents died while Ronnie was president, and my husband and I were both operated on for cancer. Before we had even settled in, Ronnie was shot and almost killed. Then there was the pressure of living under the intense scrutiny of the media, and the frustration of frequently being misunderstood. Everything I did or said seemed to generate controversy, and it often seemed that you couldn't open a newspaper without seeing a story about me — my husband and me, my children and me, Donald Regan and me, and so on. I don't think I was as bad, or as extreme in my power or my weakness, as I was depicted — especially during the first year, when people thought I was overly concerned with trivialities, and the final year, when some of the same people were convinced I was running the show. In many ways, I think I served as a lightning rod; and in any case, I came to realize that while Ronald Reagan was an extremely popular president, some people didn't like his wife very much. Something about me, or the image people had of me, just seemed to rub them the wrong way."

"Although there is a certain dignity in silence, which I find appealing, I have decided that for me, for our children, and for the historical record, I want to tell my side of the story. So much was said about me — about astrology, and my relationship with Raisa Gorbachev, and whether I got Donald Regan fired, and what went on between me and my children, especially Patti. Ironically, I felt I could start rebuilding our private life only by going public on these and other topics — to have my say and then to move on. I often cried during those eight years. There were times when I just didn't know what to do, or how I would survive. But even so, I wouldn't trade those experiences for anything. I did things I never dreamed I could do, went places I never imagined I'd go, grew in ways I never thought possible."

"I kept a diary during our White House years, and I have drawn upon it often in this book. I experience the world through my intuitions and feelings, and you'll find out a lot about those in these pages. My mother used to say, “Play the hand that’s dealt you,” and that is what I have always tried to do. And this, for better or worse, is how it seemed to me."

"I was not the power behind the throne. Did I ever give Ronnie advice? You bet I did. I'm the one who knows him best, and I was the only person in the White House who had absolutely no agenda of her own — except helping him. And so I make no apologies for telling him what I thought. Just because you're married doesn't mean you have no right to express your opinions. For eight years I was sleeping with the president, and if that doesn't give you special access, I don't know what does! So yes, I gave Ronnie my best advice — whenever he asked for it, and sometimes when he didn't. But that doesn't mean he always took it. Ronald Reagan has a mind of his own."

"A lot of what acting is, is paying attention."

"Nancy Reagan became first lady during the height of the feminist movement, and women who were battling for their rights in a male-dominated world saw her as an anachronism. Reagan said her life began when she met her husband. The adoring look she focused on her Ronnie when they were in public became known as "the gaze," adding to the caricature of her as a rich Hollywood socialite who did not understand the concerns of a generation of women coming into their own as professionals and seeking equality. What her detractors failed to understand (and I was among them) was the substantive role she played behind the scenes at the White House in keeping her husband's presidency on track. She took the long view in looking after his legacy, intervening through favored surrogates to keep conservative ideologues from driving the agenda. Her insistence that no president could be considered great without reaching out to Soviet leaders trumped resistance from the right wing of the GOP. She was fiercely protective of her husband's image, less so of her own, and she paid the price. When some of her interventions became known, particularly in the personnel department, she was cast as Lady Macbeth —even though the firings she engineered won praise. ... Years later, with the benefit of hindsight and after watching Hillary Clinton's failed effort to achieve health-care reform, I came to believe Nancy Reagan deserved a fairer assessment. I wrote an op-ed piece that appeared in The Washington Post on Jan. 8, 1995, with the headline "Nancy with the centrist face: Derided as an elitist, Mrs. Reagan's impact was unequaled." I made the point that unlike Clinton, who took an office in the West Wing and was upfront about wanting to be a player, Reagan operated undercover, usually through a surrogate, and that she was a force for good. She rarely left fingerprints, but she got the job done, and her job was to play up her husband's strengths and cover for his weaknesses. She did both very well. The piece concluded with this line: "She is without doubt an effective First Lady, and she may yet win our hearts." Soon after I received a handwritten note from Mrs. Reagan saying, "I don't really know how to say this but when something very nice comes from an unexpected source, it's really appreciated — and if you see me in a different light now, I'm happy. I can only hope one day 'to win the heart.' " Later that same year, she cooperated with a Newsweek cover about her reconciliation with daughter Patti Davis, and how the president's Alzheimer's disease had brought the family together after literally decades of turmoil. Another handwritten note arrived shortly after with the lighthearted comment, "We've got to stop meeting like this!" After sharing her thoughts and emotions on her family's difficult times, Reagan said, "Hopefully I'm close to 'winning the heart.' " In looking back at these notes, I realize how much it meant to her to gain a measure of affection after being treated so harshly in the public eye."

"It took her husband's long illness and her grace in caring for him to show her critics what she was made of. Rarely did she spend more than an hour or two away from him, and during the decade of his decline, she guarded his image, his legacy, and his dignity. As his cognitive powers slipped away, eldest son Michael reminded him that he used to be president. "How did I do?" Reagan replied, his characteristic humor and humility intact. In the 1994 letter to the American people in which the former president revealed his illness, he wrote, "I only wish there was some way I could spare Nancy from this painful experience. When the time comes I am confident that with your help she will face it with faith and courage." In their life together, Ronald Reagan never worried about anything; Nancy worried about everything, carrying a burden few appreciated until the end. She didn't have his gift for storytelling, but she made sure all the parts were in place, and by honoring him, she was true to herself, a woman for all times."

"You didn't have to be a Reagan Republican to admire and respect Nancy Reagan. ... She was a tower of strength alongside her husband, had strong beliefs, and was not afraid to chart her own course politically. She persuaded her husband to support the Brady Law, and their advocacy was instrumental in helping us pass it."

"I appreciate the attention and prayers of people I will probably never meet. Just as when my father died, there is comfort in feeling surrounded by gentle thoughts and kind wishes, often sent out by strangers. And just as when my father died, we will honor my mother publicly — stand on the public stage and share as much as we can. Then, when that is completed, we'll draw the circle in a little tighter and deal with the often complicated map of personal loss."

"Her most famous moment as First Lady came almost by accident: the Just Say No campaign against drug use at a time when abuse was running out of control. "I was in California and I was talking to, I think, fifth graders, and one little girl raised her hand and said, 'Mrs. Reagan, what do you do if somebody offers you drugs?' And I said, 'well, you just say no.' And there it was born. I think people thought that we had an advertising agency over who dreamed that up — not true." Reagan called her "my secret weapon" in his fight against drug use."

"the 1980s, when Nancy Reagan's slogan "Just Say No" passed as high-level drug education."

"Reagan's legacy may be one of the few things Republican presidential candidates have agreed upon in recent weeks. Republican front-runner Donald Trump called Reagan an “amazing woman” on Twitter, and Sen. Ted Cruz recalled her “deep passion.”"

"When she greeted Gromyko, he leaned down to her and said, "Does your husband believe in peace?" She responded, "Yes, of course." Gromkyo responded, "Then whisper 'peace' in your husband's ear every night." Without missing a beat, Mrs. Reagan replied, "I will. And I'll also whisper it in your ear." Gromyko repeated the story many times over the years. It was a clear and unmistakable message coming from President's Reagan's closet and most influential adviser — his wife — that they had turned a new page in the relationship. The rest is history. President Reagan and Soviet President Gorbachev reached historic arms control agreements. Reagan went to Moscow. Gorbachev visited the United States. They ushered in a new era of peace that had been unequalled in modern times. Feminists today look at Nancy Reagan as an example of the old world, when women worried more about frivolous things like clothes and dinner parties. Let them. Nancy Reagan had more to do with successfully winning the Cold War than all the generals, diplomats and politicians ever could. Nancy Reagan may have been tiny in size, but she was a giant in stature. We have peace in the world today because that indomitable first lady took the first step."

"Nancy Reagan once wrote that nothing could prepare you for living in the White House. She was right, of course. But we had a head start, because we were fortunate to benefit from her proud example, and her warm and generous advice. Our former First Lady redefined the role in her time here. Later, in her long goodbye with President Reagan, she became a voice on behalf of millions of families going through the depleting, aching reality of Alzheimer's, and took on a new role, as advocate, on behalf of treatments that hold the potential and the promise to improve and save lives. We offer our sincere condolences to their children, Patti, Ron, and Michael, and to their grandchildren. And we remain grateful for Nancy Reagan's life, thankful for her guidance, and prayerful that she and her beloved husband are together again."

"I am saddened by the passing of my step mother Nancy Reagan...She is once again with the man she loved. God Bless... Nancy is where she has always wanted to be with her Ronnie...Now she is at peace..."

"With charm, grace, and a passion for America, this couple reminded us of the greatness and the endurance of the American experiment. ... Some underestimate the influence of a first lady but from Martha and Abigail through Nancy and beyond, these women have shaped policy, strengthened resolve, and drawn on our better angels. God and Ronnie have finally welcomed a choice soul home."

"She will be sorely missed by those who knew her, and forever remembered by a grateful nation."

"Ronald Reagan could not have accomplished everything that he did without his wife Nancy. As first lady, she brought a sense of grace and dignity to the White House. She roused the country to redouble the fight against drugs. And she showed us all the meaning of devotion as she cared for President Reagan throughout his long goodbye. She loved her husband, and she loved her country. This was her service. It was her way of giving back. And all of us are very grateful. So on behalf of the entire House, I wish to extend our condolences to the Reagan family and offer our prayers on the passing of a great American, Nancy Reagan."

"Usually, I talk with you from my office in the West Wing of the White House. But tonight there's something special to talk about, and I've asked someone very special to join me. Nancy and I are here in the West Hall of the White House, and around us are the rooms in which we live. It's the home you've provided for us, of which we merely have temporary custody. Nancy's joining me because the message this evening is not my message but ours. And we speak to you not simply as fellow citizens but as fellow parents and grandparents and as concerned neighbors. It's back-to-school time for America's children. And while drug and alcohol abuse cuts across all generations, it's especially damaging to the young people on whom our future depends."

"No matter how divisive the nation was during the Presidency, the First Ladies of this nation knew their job was to soften the rhetoric by loving all Americans equally – just like a mother would. ... She wants people to know that the First Ladies are tight. They get together once a year to support each other."

"I think it was that picture, more than anything else, that gave me a horror of nobility. Ever since then I have fought against portraying saccharine characters. Give me the part of a vixen and I'm happy."

"That picture clinched my future as far as Universal was concerned. They felt that as I had not emerged as a glamour girl after being worked over by , I had no possibilities. When I arrived in Hollywood, when I thought about it all, I considered myself as normally attractive; after that year at Universal I found that I was apologizing for living. Physically I considered myself as one to be avoided. I still cringe at the beating I took."

"What a dump."

"To look back is to relax one's vigil."

"The act of sex, gratifying though it may be, is God's joke on humanity. It is man's last desperate stand at superintendency. The whole ritual is a grotesque anachronism, an outdated testament to man's waning power. It's all we've got and so we make the best of it. It is not, however, sufficient reason for matrimony."

"Attempt the impossible in order to improve your work."

"I love my profession. I would never stop. Relax? I relax when I work. It's my life."

"'In the beginning was the Word,' and you must not be tempted with a script just because you have a great part. You want a great role to play, but the whole - the whole - must be good. It'll never succeed if it's just the role you like."

"I think Mr. Reagan has done very well under very difficult circumstances. He's had terrific problems physically and he's managed them very well. But my God, the witch hunt today! Is there any human being alive who hasn't done something bad in their youth - like maybe smoke marijuana once? And this man (Judge Ginsburg) found it necessary to admit it! My God! It would be like Mr. Jack Kennedy sitting down and listing all the women (he knew) before he got in."

"I'm the nicest goddamn dame that ever lived."

"May each of my grandsons know, at an early age, what his life's ambition is -- and may he be successful in his pursuit of that goal."

"Miss Bankhead isn't well enough known nationally to warrant my imitating her. (In response to accusations she imitated Bankhead in the role of Margo Channing in All about Eve. Bankhead resented Davis for the perceived imitation, which she considered mocking, and for portraying her Broadway Roles on film [Dark Victory, Jezebel, The Little Foxes].This comment is unusual in that Davis usually tried to deflate the myth [started by Tallulah for amusement and publicity of any sort of conflict between them, instead expressing her admiration for Bankhead. Similarly, when Bankhead was asked to do an imitation of Davis, she said "Why should I dahling, she's been imitating me long enough". Before candidly remarking "But really, it's been sheer coincidence that Bette's been playing the leading roles in films like Dark Victory. I really admire her very much.")"

"Brought up to respect the conventions, love had to end in marriage. I'm afraid it did."

"Discipline is a symbol of caring to a child. Discipline is guidance. If there is love, there is no such thing as being too tough with a child."

"When a man gives his opinion, he's a man. When a woman gives her opinion, she's a bitch."

"Old age ain't no place for sissies."

"You will never be happier than you expect. To change your happiness, change your expectation."

"My passions were all gathered together like fingers that made a fist. Drive is considered aggression today; I knew it then as purpose."

"She is a pro from start to finish. She always gives her best, and her best is really something. It's got power and force and meaning. Her contribution to any film is meaningful. It's probably her New England heritage, but she believes firmly in giving a good day's work for a good day's pay. She's a no-nonsense dame who's earned the respect of her colleagues by hard work and talent. She's been nominated for an Academy Award 10 times, the greatest number ever given anybody in this business, and she's won two Oscars. I don't know how many pictures she's made, 80 or 90, but she can work for me as long as she wants to."

"Then I did '—at the end director boldly predicted would be a big hit, I'd have a solid career and Bette Davis would go nowhere. Bette hasn't spoken to him since."

"You know, Bette Davis was the person who said, "Aging ain’t for sissies.""

"Davis has nice eyes."

"She has about as much sex appeal as ."

"I could just about stand being in a southern plantation at 5 A.M. with Miss Crawford. But never Miss Davis!"

"For years I gave the press really ugly pictures of myself which would make me cringe...And I didn't exist!...They can't market you, so you don't appear to the public, so you don't have a voice."

"It's a bizarre but wonderful feeling, to arrive dead center of a target you didn't even know you were aiming for."

"All great human deeds both consume and transform their doers. Consider an athlete, or a scientist, or an artist, or an independent business creator. In the service of their goals they lay down time and energy and many other choices and pleasures; in return, they become most truly themselves. A false destiny may be spotted by the fact that it consumes without transforming, without giving back the enlarged self. Becoming a parent is one of these basic human transformational deeds. By this act, we change our fundamental relationship with the universe — if nothing else, we lose our place as the pinnacle and end-point of evolution, and become a mere link. The demands of motherhood especially consume the old self, and replace it with something new, often better and wiser, sometimes wearier or disillusioned, or tense and terrified, certainly more self-knowing, but never the same again."

"I've described my usual writing process as scrambling from peak to peak on inspiration through foggy valleys of despised logic. Inspiration is better — when you can get it."

"Women do desperately need models for power other than the maternal."

"I cannot emphasize enough that I do not start with a plan or agenda and mechanically manipulate characters and events to carry it out. I set characters in motion, and let them teach me what the book is."

"I am a shy person when allowed. I regard a lot of the PR — s, speeches, appearances, media interviews — with much the same dismay as a non-swimming parent would contemplate the prospect of jumping into a raging torrent to rescue their child. One doesn't really see how any good can come of it, but one can't not jump. ("My baby book, help, it is drowning!") I need to get in touch with my surly side more, I suppose, to learn to say "no" to nice people who like me."

"There’s an awful a lot of gaming of the list that goes on in book promotion, where you try to make everybody aware of your book at the same time, try to get them to buy it, get it noticed, get it visible. Which is kind of the opposite of the way I’ve written. I’ve not written bestsellers, I’ve written evergreens. Every book I’ve ever written is still in print."

"Writing is a very redemptive profession, because all of your mistakes can be reclassified as raw material. ... All those things that went awry become material and become more manageable, psychologically and otherwise. ... My five years I spent wandering around in college and left without a degree (to my parents' dismay) — all turned out to be useful to my career ..."

"On the sixth day God saw He couldn’t do it all, it read, so He created engineers."

"Whether you function as welders or inspectors, the laws of physics are implacable lie-detectors. You may fool men. You will never fool the metal. That’s all."

"Were you born inhuman, or did you grow so by degrees—M.S., M.D., Ph.D..."

"Of all the times to pick for this outbreak of idiocy, this has gotta be the worst possible. It’s got to be deliberate. Nothing this fouled up could be by chance."

"The line of logic trailed off in confusion; he turned his thoughts impatiently from it. Mental wheel-spinning, as unproductive as philosophy class in college."

"I don’t know whose judgement is worse, yours or the jerk’s who hired you—"

"Claire, listen to me. The proper response to Bruce isn’t suicide, it’s murder."

"GalacTech’s not God, Claire. You shouldn’t have to sacrifice your firstborn to it."

"There are weapons all around us here, we just don’t recognize them because we call them “tools.”"

"Even soldiers in battle have to be brought to a special state of mental excitement to shoot total strangers."

"This isn’t a class. This is real life."

"God’s not here. Somebody’s got to fill in."

"The quaddies, he reflected, didn’t seem to have a very clear idea of private property. Probably came from a lifetime spent in a communal space habitat, with its tight ecology. Planets were communal in the same way, really, except that their enormous size put so much slack in their systems, it was disguised."

"“The trouble with you, Ti,” lectured Leo kindly, “is that you lack teaching experience. If you had, you’d have faith that the most unlikely people can learn the most amazing things.”"

"“We’ve run into a problem, Leo.” “But of course. Who ever tracks me down to impart good news?"

"We make our own luck. And it’s my responsibility to see it’s good and not bad."

"He loathed letting her push his buttons; still, she had a valid point: cover-your-ass was a fundamental rule for survival even of the fittest."

"Clearly, you could die while waiting for other people to start your life for you."

"“I could bring almost nothing—I scarcely knew what to choose.” “Think of the vast amounts of money we shall save on shipping charges, then.”"

"Shooting people was such a stupid activity, why should everybody—anybody!—be so impressed? Silver wondered irritably. You would think she had done something truly great, like discover a new treatment for black stem-rot."

"If you ever have to make a choice between learning and inspiration, boy, choose learning. It works more of the time."

"And what is the most important leg of a three-legged stool? The one that is missing, of course."

"He gave himself up to God and pressed the button."

"“Smoke test?...What’s that?”... “It’s an ancient and honorable term for the final step in any engineering project,” Leo explained. “Turn it on, see if it smokes.”"

"Leadership is mostly a power over imagination, and never more so than in combat. The bravest man alone can only be an armed lunatic. The real strength lies in the ability to get others to do your work."

"If it ever came down to exerting power by force, it would mean I’d already lost it."

"Save me from that! To pour your life into sons for eighteen or twenty years, and then have the government take them away and waste them cleaning up after some failure of politics—no thanks."

"I suppose my determination to be a soldier stems from that date. I mean the real thing, not the parades and the uniforms and the glamour, but the logistics, the offensive advantage, the speed and surprise—the power. A better-prepared, stronger, tougher, faster, meaner son-of-a-bitch than any who came through that door."

"Even after four days of oatmeal and blue cheese dressing, they were a disappointment. “Are you sure this isn’t instant boots?” asked Cordelia."

"The old customs are dead, and we keep trying on new ones, like badly fitting clothes."

"She took the story in like some strange, spiked gift, too fragile to drop, too painful to hold."

"“Seems to me the only difference between your friends and your enemies is how long they stand around chatting before they shoot you.” “Yes,” Vorkosigan agreed, “I could take over the universe with this army if I could ever get all their weapons pointed in the same direction.”"

"I had a teacher who used to reflect back my questions that way. I thought it was the Socratic method, and it impressed me immensely, until I found out he used it whenever he didn’t know the answer."

"“We were told the Betans killed you, sir,” he said suspiciously. “Yes, it’s a rumor I’ve had difficulty living down,” said Vorkosigan. “You can see it’s not true.” “Your funeral was splendid,” said Koudelka. “You should have been there.” “Next time, perhaps,” Vorkosigan grinned. “Oh. You know I didn’t mean it that way, sir. Lieutenant Radnov made the best speech.” “I’m sure. He’d probably been working on it for months.”"

"They stared at her curiously and she caught snatches of conversation in two or three languages. It wasn’t hard to guess their content, and she smiled a bit grimly. Youth, it appeared, was full of illusions as to how much sexual energy two people might have to spare while hiking forty or so kilometers a day, concussed, stunned, diseased, on poor food and little sleep, alternating caring for a wounded man with avoiding becoming dinner for every carnivore within range—and with a coup to plan for at the end."

"Captains may come and captains may go, but the administration goes on forever."

"Vorkalloner seemed suddenly less amusing. “Why are you all so anxious to put us in a bottle, anyway?” “Why, orders,” said Vorkalloner simply, like an ancient fundamentalist who answers every question with the tautology, “Because God made it that way.” Then a little agnostic doubt began to creep over his face. “Actually, I thought we might have been sent out here on guard duty as some kind of punishment,” he joked. The remark caught Vorkosigan’s humor. “For your sins? Your cosmology is too egocentric, Aristede”"

"I have an aversion to closed doors anyway. You never know what’s on the other side."

"“Anybody ever tell you you’re a lunatic?” “Not in this context.”"

"It’s a moribund body anyway, afflicted with the narrowest conservatism and stuffed with old relics only concerned with protecting their privileges. I’m not sure anything can be done with the Counts in the long run. Perhaps they should finally be allowed to dodder over the brink of extinction."

"Do you know, I think you’d like politics at least on Barrayar. Maybe because it’s so similar to what we call war, elsewhere."

"I’m sure we’d all rather be clever than brave."

"So in the physics of the heart, distance is relative; it’s time that’s absolute."

"No fear trembled his voice. Well, she reflected, perhaps he was not old enough yet to have really come to believe in death after life."

"This war nonsense was a great psychological education. That chronometer had to be wrong. Surely it had been a year, and not an hour…"

"He said that permitting private judgments to turn my duty in the smallest matter would be just like getting a little bit pregnant—that the consequences would very soon get beyond me."

"East is west, up is down, and being falsely arrested for getting your C.O.’s throat cut is a simplification. I must be on Barrayar."

"“Things going well for your side, are they?” she asked, oppressed. “We’re becoming nicely overextended. Some people regard that as progress.”"

"But exile, for no other motive than ease—that would be to give up all hope of honor. The last defeat, with no seed of future victory in it."

"“Suffering bastard.” “I thought you saw meaning in that sort of thing,” said Vorkosigan. “In the abstract. Most days it’s just stumbling around in the dark with the rest of creation, smashing into things and wondering why it hurts.”"

"The really unforgivable acts are committed by calm men in beautiful green silk rooms, who deal death wholesale, by the shipload, without lust, or anger, or desire, or any redeeming emotion to excuse them but cold fear of some pretended future. But the crimes they hope to prevent in that future are imaginary. The ones they commit in the present—they are real."

"I’m sorry. I can love you. I can grieve for you, or with you. I can share your pain. But I cannot judge you."

"“Well, I don’t hate him. I can’t say I worship him, either.” She paused a long time, and looked up to meet her mother’s eyes squarely. “But when he’s cut, I bleed.”"

"“So this word of honor business—you believe he never breaks it?” “Well…” “He does, then.” “I have seen him do so. But the cost was huge.” “He breaks it for a price, then.” “Not for a price. At a cost.” “I fail to see the distinction.” “A price is something you get. A cost is something you lose.”"

"“Women shouldn’t be in combat,” said Vorkosigan, grimly glum. “Neither should men, in my opinion.”"

"Why shouldn’t a madman dream of being sane?"

"“Ah, yes. I recall from your file that you are some sort of theist.” said the Emperor. “I am an atheist, myself. A simple faith, but a great comfort to me, in these last days.” “Yes, I have often felt the pull of it myself.”"

"I’ve always thought—tests are a gift. And great tests are a great gift. To fail the test is a misfortune. But to refuse the test is to refuse the gift, and something worse, more irrevocable, than misfortune. Do you understand what I’m saying?"

"I’ve always felt that theists were more ruthless than atheists."

"A person’s things can be a kind of exterior morphology of their mind."

"What a strange world you must live in, inside your head."

"An honor is not diminished for being shared."

"“Don’t be afraid,” she said. “The dead cannot hurt you. They give you no pain, except that of seeing your own death in their faces. And one can face that, I find.” Yes, he thought, the good face pain. But the great—they embrace it."

"Check your assumptions, Cordelia thought to herself in amusement. In fact, check your assumptions at the door."

"You can’t choose between evil and evil, in the dark, by logic. You can only cling to some safety line of principle."

"“What a barbaric custom.” “Well, we could treat crime as a disease, like you Betans. You know what that’s like. At least we kill a man cleanly, all at once, instead of in bits over the years….I don’t know.” “How will they…do it?” “Beheading. It’s supposed to be almost painless.” “How do they know?” His laugh was totally without humor. “A very cogent question.”"

"“For all you Betans seem soft, you have an appalling cold-blooded streak in you.” “Rational streak, sir. Rationality has its merits. You Barrayarans ought to try it sometime.”"

"Stupidity, yes, but not unilateral stupidity. Something this screwed up had to have taken a committee."

"My home is not a place, it is a person, sir."

"“You think like a soldier, m’lady.” Kly sounded approving. Cordelia wrinkled her brow in dismay. What an appalling compliment. The last thing she wanted was to start thinking like a soldier, playing their game by their rules. The hallucinatory military worldview was horribly infectious, though, immersed in it as she was now."

"Anyway, she now realized, the military histories she’d read had left out the most important part; they never told what happened to people’s babies."

"It’s...a transcendental act. Making life. I thought about that when I was carrying Miles. “By this act, I bring one death into the world.” One birth, one death, and all the pain and acts of will between."

"Our children change us…whether they live or not."

"Good soldiers never pass up a chance to eat or sleep. They never know how much they’ll be called on to do before the next chance."

"Any community’s arm of force—military, police, security—needs people in it who can do the necessary evil, and yet not be made evil by it. To do only the necessary and no more. To constantly question the assumptions, to stop the slide into atrocity."

"But pain...seems to me an insufficient reason not to embrace life. Being dead is quite painless. Pain, like time, is going to come on regardless. Question is, what glorious moments can you win from life in addition to the pain?"

"You have a little time yet. You can say a lot in a little time, if you stick to words of one syllable."

"Why have these people so blithely handed me the right to risk their lives? God, I hate command."

"Suicidal glory is the luxury of the irresponsible. We’re not giving up. We’re waiting for a better opportunity to win."

"I don’t want power. I just object to idiots having power over me."

"Surely she was mad. She didn’t feel anything, no grief or remorse, though her heart was racing and her breath came in gasps. A shocky combat-high, that immortal rush that made men charge machine guns. So this was what the war-addicts came for."

"Let me help. Rhymes with I love you, right?"

"Children might or might not be a blessing, but to create them and then fail them was surely damnation."

"Welcome to Barrayar, son. Here you go: have a world of wealth and poverty, wrenching change and rooted history. Have a birth; have two. Have a name. Miles means “soldier,“ but don’t let the power of suggestion overwhelm you. Have a twisted form in a society that loathes and fears the mutations that have been its deepest agony. Have a title, wealth, power, and all the hatred and envy they will draw. Have your body ripped apart and re-arranged. Inherit an array of friends and enemies you never made. Have a grandfather from hell. Endure pain, find joy, and make your own meaning, because the universe certainly isn’t going to supply it. Always be a moving target. Live. Live. Live."

"I would fight the world for you, but I’m damned if I can figure out how to save you from yourself. Go for it, kid."

"To kill a man, it helps if you can first take away his face. A neat mental trick. Handy for a soldier."

"Ask a simple question, get a simple brick wall."

"It’s never too late while you’re breathing."

"What you are is a question only you can answer."

"I’ve got forward momentum. There’s no virtue in it. It’s just a balancing act. I don’t dare stop."

"“You know,” he said as they started back up the corridor, “it might be better if we don’t yell, going in. It’s startling. It’s bound to be a lot easier to hit people if they’re not jumping around and ducking behind things.” “They do it that way on the vids,” Mayhew offered."

"I guess it just doesn’t look very heroic to sneak up behind somebody and shoot them in the back. I can’t help thinking it would be more efficient, though."

"The deadly weapon seemed unnaturally light and easy in his hand. Something that lethal should have more heft, like a broadsword. Wrong, for murder to be so potentially effortless—one ought to at least have to grunt for it."

"Organization seemed to be the key. To get huge masses of properly matched men and material to the right place at the right time in the right order with the swiftness required to even grasp survival—to wrestle an infinitely complex and confusing reality into the abstract shape of victory—organization, it seemed, might even outrank courage as a soldierly virtue."

"Some saw stars, it seemed, and some saw the spaces between them."

"A mercenary who can’t honor his contract when it’s rough as well as smooth is a thug, not a soldier."

"In the long run more mercenaries have had their asses shot off by their contractors than by their enemies."

"Heroes. They sprang up around him like weeds. A carrier, he was seemingly unable to catch the disease he spread."

"“Ivan, one of these days somebody is going to pull out a weapon and plug you, and you’re going to die in bewilderment, crying, ‘What did I say? What did I say?’” “What did I say?” asked Ivan indignantly."

"He should be keeping reality and fantasy separate in his own mind, at least, even while mixing them as much as possible in others’."

"How can I give you up? You’re the mountains and the lake, the memories—you have them all. When you’re with me, I’m at home, wherever I am."

"Acting or reacting, we carry him in us. You can’t walk away from him any more than I can. Whether you travel toward or away, he’ll be the compass. He’ll be the glass, full of subtle colors and astigmatisms, through which all new things will be viewed. I too have a father who haunts me, and I know."

"That idea only makes sense if you don’t think too hard about it."

"Not only was Ivan an idiot, but he generated a telepathic damping field that turned people nearby into idiots too."

"There was no way he could anticipate every contingency. When the time came to leap in faith, whether you had your eyes open or closed or screamed all the way down or not made no practical difference."

"You know, if you’re trying to take a roomful of people by surprise, it’s a lot easier to hit your targets if you don’t yell going through the door."

"Hunting hawks do not belong in cages, no matter how much a man covets their grace, no matter how golden the bars. They are far more beautiful soaring free. Heartbreakingly beautiful."

"The trick of handling horses isn’t to be faster than the horse, or stronger than the horse. That pits your weakness against his strengths. The trick is to be smarter than the horse. That pits your strength against his weakness, eh?"

"Yeah, so I’m short. But wait’ll you see me dance."

"Aren’t family squabbles jolly fun? Bleeding ulcers run in my family, we give them to each other."

"The fundamental principle was clear: the spirit was to be preferred over the letter, truth over technicalities. Precedent was held subordinate to the judgment of the man on the spot. Alas, the man on the spot was himself. There was no refuge for him in automated rules, no hiding behind the law says as if the law were some living overlord with a real Voice. The only voice here was his own."

"The old ones are fighting it. They call it off planet corruption, but it’s really the future they fear."

"Ordinary people need extraordinary examples."

"I know you have courage, and I know you have will. The rest is just picking yourself up and ramming into the wall again and again until it falls down."

"How small those mountains looked from space!"

"Peace to you, small lady, he thought to Raina. You’ve won a twisted poor modern knight, to wear your favor on his sleeve. But it’s a twisted poor world we were both born into, that rejects us without mercy and ejects us without consultation. But at least I won’t just tilt at windmills for you. I’ll send in sappers to mine the twirling suckers, and blast them into the sky… He knew who he served now. And why he could not quit. And why he must not fail."

"We don’t just march on the future, we charge it."

"Pain hurts, sir. I don’t court it."

"He’s not like anything, Ahn. He’s the original."

"When a normal ensign looked at his commander, he ought to see a godlike being, not a, a...future subordinate. New ensigns were supposed to be a subhuman species anyway."

"If we shouldn’t do it, we shouldn’t be able to do it."

"Those who do not know their history, his thought careened, are doomed to keep stepping in it. Alas, so were those who did, it seemed."

"A weapon is a device for making your enemy change his mind."

"The facts appear to be mutating every forty minutes. like bacteria."

"Your moral scruples may be admirable, Miles, but I’m not sure I can afford them."

"“Other than that, how was Kiril Island, Ensign Vorkosigan?” inquired the Count. “You didn’t vid home much, your mother noticed.” “I was busy. Lessee. The climate was ferocious, the terrain was lethal, a third of the population including my immediate superior was dead drunk most of the time. The average IQ equalled the mean temperature in degrees cee, there wasn’t a woman for five hundred kilometers in any direction, and the base commander was a homicidal psychotic. Other than that, it was lovely.”"

"“This isn’t a good war game, Dad says,” commented Miles. “Not enough random factors and uncontrolled surprises to simulate reality.”"

"Mercenaries thrive on other people’s chaos."

"The job was interesting for a week, while he was learning it, mind-numbing after that."

"Geography is the mother of strategy."

"Your “accidents,” I once noticed, have ways of entangling your enemies that are the green envy of mature and careful strategists. Far too consistent for chance, I concluded it had to be unconscious will."

"Yes, well…actual combat…is a lot stupider than I’d imagined. If two groups can cooperate to the incredible extent it takes to meet in battle, why not put in a tenth that effort to talk?"

"War is not its own end, except in some catastrophic slide into absolute damnation. It’s peace that’s wanted. Some better peace than the one you started with."

"There is no moral difference between ordering an execution, and carrying it out."

"“The key of strategy, little Vor,” she explained kindly, “is not to choose a path to victory, but to choose so that all paths lead to a victory.”"

"I may be small, but I screw up big because I’m standing on the shoulders of GIANTS."

"“Face like an angel, mind like a rabid mongoose?” Oser’s lips twitched very slightly. “You’ve met her.”"

"“Is she pretty?” “Yeah, if you happen to like blond power-mad homicidal maniacs, I suppose she could be quite overwhelming.”"

"I don’t think I’m destined to die today. I must be being saved for day after tomorrow."

"“Think of the glory. Think of your reputation. Think how great it’ll look on your next resume.” “On my cenotaph, you mean. Nobody will be able to collect enough of my scattered atoms to bury. You’re going to cover my funeral expenses, son?” “Splendidly. Banners, dancing girls, and enough beer to float your coffin to Valhalla.” Tung sighed. “Make it plum wine to float the boat, eh? Drink the beer.”"

"It could be worse was always an unassailable assertion."

"“Damn,” said Elena in a hushed voice. “If I didn’t know you, I’d think you were Mad Yuri’s understudy. The look on your face…am I reading too much into all that innuendo, or did you in fact just connive to assassinate Gregor in one breath, offer to cuckold him in the next, accuse your father of homosexuality, suggest a patricidal plot against him, and league yourself with Cavilo—what are you going to do for an encore?” “Depends on the straight lines. I can hardly wait to find out,” Miles panted. “Was I convincing?” “You were scary.” “Good.”"

"Rule 1: Only overrule the tactical computer if you know something it doesn’t. Rule 2: The tac comp always knows more than you do."

"Home is where, when you have to go there, they have to take you in."

"Beware of wishing for justice. You might get it."

"She could be the only person on Barrayar to automatically put Gregor the man before Gregor the emperor. All our ranks look like optical illusions to her, I think."

"“I’m afraid of power…” Gregor’s voice went low, contemplative. “You aren’t afraid of power, you’re afraid of hurting people. If you wield that power,” Miles deduced suddenly. “Huh. Close guess.” “Not dead-on?” “I’m afraid I might enjoy it. The hurting.”"

"The arrow of justice flies one way."

"He leaned forward to put his elbows on the comconsole, and lace his fingers together, and regarded Miles with a kind of clinical disapproval, as if he were a data point that messed up the curve, and Illyan was deciding if he could still save the theory by re-classifying him as experimental error."

"“Ensign Vorkosigan,” Illyan sighed. It seems you still have a little problem with subordination.” “I know, sir. I’m sorry.” “Do you ever intend to do anything about it besides feel sorry?” “I can’t help it, sir, if people give me the wrong orders.”"

"Hi, I’m a hero, but I can’t tell you why. It’s classified."

"“Hands are to be hired. Design is the test of the intellect.” “I must disagree. In my experience, hands are integral with brains, almost another lobe for intelligence. What one does not know through one’s hands, one does not truly know.”"

"“Do me the honor of grasping that I may just possibly know what I’m doing!” I wish to hell I knew what I was doing. Intuition was nothing but the subconscious processing of subliminal clues, he was fairly sure, but I feel it in my bones made too uncomfortably thin a public defense for his actions."

"All in all, it was probably a good thing these youths had no political interests. They were just the sort of people who started revolutions but could not finish them, their idealism betrayed by their incompetence."

"He knew now why they called it “falling in love.” There was the same nauseating vertigo of free fall, the same vast exhilaration, the same sick certainty of broken bones upon impact with a rapidly rising reality."

"“No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Not when the enemy is me."

"“I made up a lot of instant barbarian folklore—I told ’em a Vor prides himself on self-control, that it’s not considered polite on Barrayar for a man to, you know, before his lady has. Three times. It was considered insulting to her. I stroked, I rubbed, I scratched, I recited poetry, I nuzzled and nibbled and—cripes, my fingers are cramped.” His speech was a bit slurred, too, Miles noticed. “I thought they’d never fall asleep.” Ivan paused; a slow smirk displaced the snarl on his face. “But they were smiling, when they finally did.”"

"“Connection? What possible connection?” “We are the connection, Ivan. A couple of Barrayaran backcountry boys come to the big city, and ripe for the plucking. Somebody is using us. And I think somebody... has just made a major mistake in his choice of tools.” Or fools."

"“So use your initiative!” “I don’t have initiative. I follow orders, thank you. It’s much safer.” “Fine, I order you to use your initiative.”"

"Vorreedi stated dangerously, “I am not a mushroom, Lieutenant Vorkosigan.” To be kept in the dark and fed on horseshit, right. Miles sighed inwardly."

"Rian seemed less and less like a damsel in distress all the time. In fact, he was beginning to wonder if he was trying to rescue the dragon."

"In my experience, milady, we can never get back to exactly where we started, no matter how hard we try."

"Lord X was a tyrant, not a revolutionary. He wanted to take over the system, not change it."

"You can’t give power away and keep it simultaneously. Except posthumously."

"Behavior that is rewarded is repeated. And the reverse."

"Vorreedi, Miles reminded himself, was Intelligence, not Counter-intelligence; curiosity, not paranoia, was his driving force."

"“The best strategies run on rails like that.” Miles pointed out. “Live or die, you make your goal.”"

"“How did your mother cope, Lord Vorkosigan?” “You mean, being an egalitarian Betan and all? No problem. She says egalitarians adjust to aristocracies just fine, as long as they get to be the aristocrats.”"

"“Do you know what this is, Lord Vorkosigan?” Giaja asked. Miles eyed the medallion of the Order of Merit on its colored ribbon, glittering on a bed of velvet. “Yes, sir. It is a lead weight, suitable for sinking small enemies. Are you going to sew me into a silk sack with it, before you throw me overboard?”"

"“Good luck,” snorted Ivan. “Luck is something you make for yourself, if you want it.”"

"Women. Uterine replicators with legs, as it were."

"The rest of the universe was disappointing at first glance."

"Some places have religion. Here we have safety drills."

"There are always survivors at a massacre. Among the victors, if nowhere else."

"As long as I’m going to commit a crime, let it be a perfect one."

"Quinn ignored the admonition with a verve bordering, Ethan thought, on the anti-social."

"Life with women did not just induce strange behavior, it appeared; it induced very strange behavior."

"Innocence might be bliss, but ignorance was demonstrably hell."

"A fool is twice a fool who tries to conceal it."

"Ethan had never found himself clinging to a cusp of human history. The trouble with the position, he found, was that in whatever direction you looked there fell away a glassy, uncontrollable slide down to a strange future you would then have to live in. He had never wanted to pray more, nor been less sure that it would do any good."

"“The probabilities would now seem to lean that way,” agreed Millisor. “I doubt everything, you see.” Ethan thought this over. “Encountering the truth must be horribly confusing for you, then.” Millisor’s lips twitched dryly. “Fortunately, it happens very seldom.”"

"Do not mistake charm for virtue."

"Curiosity is not a theological virtue."

"“I was just a little taken aback. That—that wasn’t the proposition I was expecting, is all. Excuse me. I fear I am become incurably low-minded.” “You can’t help that, I’m sure,” Ethan said tolerantly. “Being female, and all that.”"

"Change is a function of time and experience, and time is implacable."

"If you can’t be seven feet tall, be seven feet smart."

"“Some party,” commented Bel. “I went to a pet show with an atmosphere like this once.”"

"Miles was no musician, but even he could sense an intensity of passion in the playing that went beyond talent, reaching for genius."

"It’s not what you don’t know that’ll hurt you, the old saying went. It’s what you do know that isn’t so."

"One maneuvers to the limit, but the golden moment demands action. If you miss it, the gods damn you forever. and vice versa."

"Devotion to duty, or pragmatic ruthlessness, which was which? He would never know, now."

"He had his idea-fixee now, and its ramifications and his rage were an effective block against incoming data."

"How could I have died and gone to hell without noticing the transition?"

"He lay a long time, cradled in pain. He was not sure how long. The illumination from the force dome was even and shadowless, unchanging. Timeless, like eternity. Hell was eternal, was it not? This place had too damn many congruencies with hell, that was certain."

"“The devil can quote scripture, y’know.” Yes, that was rather what I had in mind…"

"Communication. This lack of word from the outside world might drive even him crazy shortly. It was as bad as prayer, talking to a god who never talked back."

"“All right,” Miles pulled Suegar to his feet, “let’s go preach to the unconverted.” Suegar laughed suddenly. “I had a top kick once who used to say, ‘Let’s go kick some ass,’ in just that tone of voice.”"

"Now there’s this about cynicism, Sergeant. It’s the universe’s most supine moral position. Real comfortable. If nothing can be done, then you’re not some kind of shit for not doing it, and you can lie there and stink to yourself in perfect peace."

"“Is this guy for real?” “He thinks he’s faking it,” said Suegar blandly, “but he’s not.”"

"“It’s true,” agreed Oliver, “that if your religion failed to deliver a miracle, that a human sacrifice would certainly follow.” “Ah...quite,” Miles gulped. “You are a man of acute insight.” “That’s not an insight,” said Oliver. “That’s a personal guarantee.”"

"Let he who is without sin cast the first lure."

"I can’t quit, once I’ve started. I’ve been told I’m pathologically persistent. I can’t quit."

"Biology is Destiny."

"“Power is better than revenge,” suggested Miles, not flinching before her snake-cold, set face, her hot coal eyes. “Power is a live thing, by which you reach out to grasp the future. Revenge is a dead thing, reaching out from the past to grasp you.”"

"Men may move mountains, but ideas move men."

"There is a subtle difference between being a prisoner and being a slave. I don’t mistake either for being free. Neither do you."

"“I have a particular aversion to stalemates. I prefer winning wars to prolonging them.” She sighed, momentarily drained, tired, old. “I’ve been at war a long time, y’know? After a while even losing a war can start to look preferable to prolonging it.”"

"“You don’t have any inhibitions at all, do you?” “Not in combat.”"

"I hate an enemy who doesn’t make mistakes."

"The loonies who sought a glorious death in battle found it very early on. This rapidly cleared the chain of command of the accumulated fools. The survivors were those who learned to fight dirty, and live, and fight another day, and win, and win, and win, and for whom nothing, not comfort, or security, not family or friends or their immortal souls, was more important than winning. Dead men are losers by definition. Survival and victory. They weren’t supermen, or immune to pain. They sweated in confusion and darkness. (And)…they won."

"There are a number of people in the universe I’d be willing to double-cross, but my own wounded aren’t among ’em."

"But at least think about it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a human being who needed to get laid worse than you do now."

"“You’re pretty damn casual about it.” “Early conditioning. Total strangers trying to kill me make me feel right at home."

"So slight a compression of the lips, and widening of the eyes, to convey so much amusement and contempt."

"The building had a strange hermetically-sealed flavor to it, redolent to Miles’s experienced nose as paranoid security in action. Ah, yes, a planet’s embassy is that planet’s soil. Feels just like home."

"Between justice and genocide there is, in the long run, no middle ground."

"“If I got assassinated now,” he shrugged helplessly, “my father would kill me.”"

"What the hell was HQ thinking of? It seemed extraordinarily obtuse even for them."

"I have taken up the art of bonsai for a hobby. The ancient Japanese are said to have worked on a single tree for as long as a hundred years. Or perhaps it only seemed like it."

"“I am not schizoid.” Miles bit off. “A little manic-depressive, maybe,” he admitted in afterthought. Galeni’s lips twitched. “Know thyself.” “We try, sir.”"

"“Can you be paranoid about being paranoid?” She smiled sweetly. “If anyone can, it’s you.”"

"He did not attempt to capture her hands. He did not make a single move that might embarrass them both. Old friends were harder to come by than new lovers. Oh, my oldest friend. Still. Always."

"Sociopath therapy was invented for people like him. No, no. The last person he wants for a character witness is someone who weeks him."

"I’m not responsible for my weird ancestors. Quite the reverse. Exactly the inverse."

"It just happens to be very important to me to win with the hand I was dealt."

"“You have the instincts of a gentleman, Ivan,” said Miles, absorbed in breaking into the coded files. “How did you ever get into security?"

"Some people would rather drown our domes in blood than learn anything from history. Or learn anything at all."

"He seems to have this strange difficulty grasping that I actually mean what I say."

"The will to be stupid is a very powerful force—"

"So. This one has never struck a man for real before. Nor killed either, I wager. Oh, little virgin, are you ever in for a bloody deflowering."

"“Power is safety.” “Let me give you a hint,” said Miles. “There is no safety. Only varying states of risk. And failure.”"

"You are what you do. Choose again, and change."

"The man who assumes everything is a lie is at least as mistaken as the one who assumes everything is true. If no guarantee can suit you, perhaps the flaw is not in the guarantee, but in you."

"They are the most insidious propagandists ever to cloak self-serving greed with pseudo-patriotism."

"Miles clutched Quinn’s elbow. “Don’t panic.” “I’m not panicking,” Quinn observed, “I’m watching you panic. It’s more entertaining.”"

"“No, no, never send interim reports,” said Miles. “Only final ones. Interim reports tend to elicit orders. Which you must then either obey, or spend valuable time and energy evading, which you could be using to solve the problem.”"

"Permanent justice is well worth a temporary offended protest, I can assure you, Lieutenant."

"“Do you see assassination as an option, sir?” “A compelling one.”"

"They’re my officers, dammit, not my harem, Miles’s thought snarled silently. But no Barrayaran officer of Destang’s age would see it that way. Some attitudes couldn’t be changed; they just had to be outlived."

"And what goes on in the head of a walking dead man? Miles wondered. What personal failure could he possibly fear more than death itself?"

"And so men organized themselves for the sake of their technology as they never had for their principles. The sea’s politics were unarguable."

"“Security, Lieutenant,” Miles said blandly. “I can’t discuss it even with you.” “Security,” she sniffed, “doesn’t hide as much from Accounting as they think they do.”"

"It’s so damned useless! The dead hand of the past goes on jerking the strings by galvanic reflex, and we poor puppets dance—nothing is served, not us, not him, not Komarr…"

"“The revolt,” breathed Galen almost to himself, “must not die.” “Even if everybody in it dies? ‘It didn’t work, so let’s do it some more’? In my line of work, they call that military stupidity. I don’t know what they call it in civilian life.”"

"“Some stand-offs,” said Galen, “are more equal than others.”"

"“You must learn to kill if you expect to survive.” “No you don’t," Miles put in. "Most people go through their whole lives without killing anybody. False argument.”"

"He felt like a man trying to assemble a jigsaw puzzle of live pieces, that moved and changed shape at random intervals with tiny malicious giggles."

"Men met energy wave with predictable results."

"Miles had heard weird tales of strange relationships between people and their clones. But then, anyone who deliberately went out and had a clone made must be kinky to start with. Far more interesting to have a child, preferably with a woman who was smarter, faster, and better-looking than oneself; then there was at least a chance for a bit of evolution in the clan."

"Still, what d’you expect of the descendants of a colony that started as a hijacker base? Naturally they developed into an aristocracy."

"“At least this should be simpler than our late vacation on Earth,” he said hopefully. “A purely military operation, no relatives, no politics, no high finance. Straight-up good guys and bad guys.” “Great,” said Quinn. “Which are we?” Miles was still thinking about the answer to that one when the fleet broke orbit."

"“I really like this married-couple cover, for travel,” he remarked. “It suits me.” He took a slightly deeper breath. “So we’ve had the honeymoon, why don’t we have the wedding to go with it?”"

"Be careful who you pretend to be. You might become it."

"The medic glance up only to say, “Be sure you get the carotid and not the jugular.” “I’m trying. They’re not color-coded.”"

"Realize this, though. Half my genes run through your body, and my selfish genome is heavily evolutionarily pre-programmed to look out for its copies. The other half is copied from the man I admire most in all the worlds and time, so my interest is doubly riveted. The artistic combination of the two, shall we say, arrests my attention."

"I grant you he’s a genius, but don’t you dare try to tell me he’s sane."

"Don’t attempt to camouflage your real blame by taking more than your share."

"“You’re scaring him, dear’” the Countess remarked. “On that topic, paranoia is the key to good health,” said the count ruefully."

"“It’s important that someone celebrate our existence,” she objected amiably. “People are the only mirror we have to see ourselves in. The domain of all meaning. All virtue, all evil, are contained only in people. There is none in the universe at large. Solitary confinement is a punishment in every human culture.”"

"Lady Peace is the first hostage taken when economic discomfort rises."

"I don’t confuse greatness with perfection. To be great anyhow is…the higher achievement."

"“I swear,” Mark whispered, “excess suspicion makes us bigger fools than excess trust does.”"

"I do think, half of what we call madness is just some poor slob dealing with pain by a strategy that annoys the people around him."

"If anyone was sane here, he swore it was by accident."

"I don’t know what passion he inspires in you—were you lovers? You’d be amazed how many people have clones made for that purpose."

"His taste for heavily-armed girlfriends did have potential drawbacks."

"Never give aversion therapy to a masochist. The results are unpredictable."

"You can tell you’re alive when somebody touches you back."

"He had looked forward to making posthumous reports to Illyan. Now he wondered if he was going to live long enough."

"They hesitated. Ah, the downside of perfect obedience: crippled initiative."

"It wasn’t, he swore, that he picked up so many women. Compared to Ivan, he was practically celibate. It was just that he never put any down. The accumulation could become downright embarrassing, over a long enough time-span."

"Sometimes, insanity is not a tragedy. Sometimes, it’s a strategy for survival. Sometimes...it’s a triumph."

"Lilly had promised him that her stimulants would buy him six hours of coherence, after which the metabolic bill would be delivered by hulking bio-thugs with spiked clubs, virtual repo-men for his neurotransmitter debt."

"Their good fortune, Mark decided, was divided exactly fifty-fifty; Miles got the good luck, and he got the rest."

"Yet being beaten by your student was the ultimate victory, for a teacher."

"I don’t regret knowing myself, ma’am. I don’t even regret…being myself."

"Mother Nature gives a sense of romance to young people, in place of prudence, to advance the species. It’s a trick—that makes us grow."

"I wouldn’t be lying. I’d just be editing my report for length."

"It wasn’t fair, for people to go and change on him, while his back was turned being dead. To change without giving notice, or even asking permission."

"You can’t just…ignore them out of existence though apparently that’s exactly what you’ve been attempting."

"Well, if you couldn’t be good, at least you could be discreet."

"She’d have no objection to the principle of the thing, but she didn’t exactly approve of the military. She didn’t exactly disapprove, either; she just made it plain that she thought there were better things for intelligent human beings to do with their lives."

"Self-sedation seemed to require more alcohol than it used to, a problem easily remedied."

"“How come they promoted you before me? Who the hell have you been sleeping with?” boiled off of Miles’s lips before he could bite it back down. He hadn’t meant his tone of voice to come out quite that harsh. Ivan shrugged, smirking. “I do my job. And I do it without going around bending all the rules into artistic little origami, shapes, either.”"

"Well, good going with your captaincy. I know you worked for it, even though you pretend not to."

"“If you can’t win, change the game.” Ivan twitched a brow upward. “If there’s no game, isn’t winning a pretty meaningless concept?”"

"Was winning all he really wanted? Or did he still want also to be seen to have won? And by whom?"

"It was never what I wanted to buy that held my heart’s hope. It was what I wanted to be."

"How could you be a Great Man if history brought you no Great Events, or brought you to them at the wrong time, too young, too old? Too damaged."

"“‘Most men,’” he quoted, “‘are of naught more use in their lives but as machines for turning food into shit.’” Ivan cocked an eyebrow at him. “Who said that? Your grandfather?” “Leonardo da Vinci,” Miles returned primly. But was compelled to add, “Grandfather quoted it to me, though.”"

"The last thing a monster wanted was a fellow to follow him around all day long with a mirror."

"Ordinary men and women…die every day. For all sorts of reasons, from random chance to inexorable time. Death is not an Imperial monopoly."

"“You go on. You just go on. There’s nothing more to it, and there’s no trick to make it easier. You just go on.” “What do you find on the other side? When you go on?” She shrugged. “Your life again. What else?” “Is that a promise?” She picked up a pebble, fingered it, and tossed it into the water. The moon-lines bloomed and danced. “It’s an inevitability. No trick. No choice. You just go on.”"

"General. Prudence is one thing. Paranoia that can’t tell friend from foe is quite another."

"The trouble with synopsized information was that it was always so nebulous. The devil was in the details, the raw data; embedded therein were all the tiny clues that fed the intuition demon until it became strong and fat and, sometimes, grew up to become an actual Theory, or even a Proof."

"Suicide wasn’t an option for me anymore, I found. Not like good old adolescent angst. I’m no longer of the secret opinion that death will somehow overlook me if I don’t do something personally about it. And give life…it seems stupid not to make the most of what I do have. Not to mention deucedly ungrateful."

"Never argue with a pedant over nomenclature. It wastes your time and annoys the pedant."

"Their excitement was dampened by a genuine concern for their daughter’s safety and personal happiness, though they are certainly as puzzled how this is to be achieved as any other set of parents."

"I despise internal investigations. Even if you win, you lose."

"“What are you doing?” the Countess asked.… “Just…wrestling with temptation.” Illyan’s voice came back, amused. “Who’s winning?” Miles’s eye followed the cracks in the plaster, overhead. His voice came out high and light, on a sigh: “I think…I’m going for the best two falls out of three.”"

"His mother had often said, When you choose an action, you choose the consequences of that action. She had emphasized the corollary of this axiom even more vehemently: when you desired a consequence you had damned well better take the action that would create it."

"I elect to be…myself."

"If we get straight truth in, maybe we’ve got half a chance of getting good judgment out. No damn chance otherwise, that’s for sure."

"Some prices are just too high, no matter how much you may want the prize. The one thing you can’t trade for your heart’s desire is your heart."

"I was never a mercenary, not ever. Not for one single minute."

"But I am not my father. I don’t have to repeat his mistakes; I can invent bright-new ones."

"“You think he’s a genius?” she said, raising her eyebrows. The high Vor twit?” “I don’t know him quite well enough, yet. But I suspect so, a part of the time.” “Can you be a genius part of the time?” “All the geniuses I ever met were so just part of the time. To qualify, you only have to be great once, you know. Once when it matters.”"

"People complaining about their spouses always looked and sounded so ugly."

"Power corrupts, but we want energy."

"“We’ll never know the whole truth, I suppose,” said Venier. Was that supposed to be a concession? “You can be told the whole truth all day long, but if you won’t believe it, then no, I don’t suppose you ever will never know it.”"

"Then he had accused her of sleeping with her women friends. That had broken something in her at last, some will to desire his good opinion. How could you argue sense into someone who believed something not because it was true, but because he was an idiot? No amount of panicky protestation or indignant denial or futile attempt to prove a negative was likely to help, because the problem was not in the accused but in the accuser. She began then to believe he was living in a different universe, one with a different set of physical laws, perhaps, and an alternate history. And very different people from the ones she met of the same name. Smarmy doppelgangers all."

"To this day she didn’t know if he taken her disgusted refusal to defend herself for a covert admission of guilt."

"Love was long gone, in her. She got by on a starvation diet of loyalty these days."

"How could you tell the difference between not liking sex, and not liking the only person you’d ever done sex with? Yet she was almost desperate for touch, mere affection untainted by the indignities of the erotic."

"Cynicism did not seem nearly so impressively daring to her now as it had when she was twenty."

"If suspicion was the deadliest possible insult, then trust was always right, even if it was mistaken."

"“Does it seem strange…does it give you a very different view of your parents, to see them on vid?” “No,” he said. “It gives me a very different view of holovids.”"

"“They seem more like toys than jewels, but I have to admit, they’re striking.” “Oh, yes, a typical tech toy. High-end this year, everywhere next year, nowhere after that, till the antiquarians’ revival.”"

"The laws of physics took precedence over heroic intent for the next couple of seconds."

"Once you had delegated the best people to do a job for you, you had to trust both them and your judgment."

"I am not here to vent my feelings. I am here to achieve my goals."

"At the moment I have very little evidence and lots of theories. I’m itching to reverse the proportions."

"“It’s a brute-force approach,” Miles said apologetically. “And not, alas, quite as simple as a data match.” “That,” murmured Gibbs, “is why enlisted men were invented.”"

"Real expertise, the kind that means you can’t be intimidated or, or…persuaded to go along with something stupid because you think everyone in the universe knows more than you do."

"Aim high. You may still miss the target but at least you won’t shoot your foot off."

"What an obituary. When I go down into the ground at last, as God is my judge, I pray my best-beloved may have better to say of me than, “He didn’t hit me.”"

"Oh hell. Have you fallen in love with this woman, idiot boy? Um. Yeah. He’d been falling for days, he realized in retrospect. It was just that he’d finally hit the ground."

"Just like swatting flies with a laser cannon. The aim’s a bit tricky, but it sure takes care of the flies."

"Forward momentum only worked as a strategy if one had correctly identified which was was forward."

"To get the right answer, one must first correctly frame the question."

"We have advanced to new and surprising levels of bafflement."

"She probably felt about matrimony the way Miles felt about needle-grenade launchers."

"Knowledge might not be power, but ignorance was definitely weakness, and so was poverty."

"One’s career might depend solely on one’s own efforts, but marriage was a lottery, and you drew your lot in late adolescence or early adulthood at a point of maximum idiocy and confusion. Perhaps it was just as well. If people were too sensible, the human race might well come to an end. Evolution favored the maximum production of children, not of happiness."

"He consoled himself with the reflection that it was seldom he found himself in company who made him feel this stupid. It was probably good for his soul."

"“Have you determined if it is meant to be a weapon at all?” she said. “We’ve got some very dead people to account for,” Miles pointed out. “That, alas, does not necessarily require a weapon.” Professor Vorthys said. “Carelessness, stupidity, haste, and ignorance are quite as powerfully destructive forces as homicidal intent.”"

"People have some very odd illusions about power. Mostly it consists of finding a parade and nipping over to place yourself at the head of the band. Just as eloquence consists of persuading people of things they desperately want to believe. Demagoguery, I suppose, is eloquence sliding to some least moral energy level."

"If you could go back in time and change things… The only moment in time you could change things was the elusive now, which slipped through your fingers as fast as you could think about it."

"The hostage game is a bad game, a sad and ugly game that’s a lot easier to start than end. The worst versions I’ve seen ended up with neither side in control, or getting anything they wanted. And the people who stand to lose the most in it frequently aren’t even playing."

"He's not even a mad scientist. He's merely a very upset engineer."

"“I’m planning my course work for the next session at university. I was too late to start this summer, so I’ll begin in the fall. There’s so much to choose from. I feel so ignorant.” “Educated is what you aim to be coming out, not going in.”"

"The parents of the preceding generation had taken galactic sex-selection technologies much too far in their foolish passion for male heirs, and the very sons they’d so cherished—Miles’s contemporaries—had inherited the resulting mating mess. Go to any formal party in Vorbarr Sultana these days, and you could practically taste the damned testosterone in the air, volatilized by the alcohol no doubt."

"He couldn’t make this go faster by pushing harder."

"Then time ran out—no. Time ran on. There was no end to time. But you come to the end of yourself, and time runs on, and leaves you."

"“Why are you here, Ivan?” He added under his breath, “and why couldn’t three bodyguards keep you out? Do I have to give orders to shoot to kill?” “My strength is great because my cause is just,” Vorpatril informed him. “My mother has sent me with a list of chores for you as long as my arm. With footnotes.”"

"I’ve seen planetary invasion plans less complex than what’s being booted about for this Imperial Wedding."

"I propose a treaty. You can have all the rest of the women in the universe. I just want this one."

"He must not be in one of his voluble moods. Either you can’t turn him on or can’t turn him off. Well, if there was a choice, taciturn was probably safer for the innocent bystanders than spring-wound."

"Mark had a Thing about Miles. Thing was not accepted psychoscientific terminology, she’d been informed by his twinkling therapist, but there was scarcely another term with the scope and flexibility to take in the whole complexity of the…Thing."

"You had to admire their honesty. No wonder they did so well at the sciences."

"“I thought he was a bit creepy.” Kareen stiffened. If you’d been cloned a slave, raised by terrorists to be a murderer, trained by methods tantamount to physical and psychological torture, and had to kill people to escape, you’d likely seem a little creepy too. If you weren’t a twitching puddle."

"Kareen was by no means sure Mark was a potential husband. He was still working his heart out on becoming a potential human being."

"She’d made it clear that Things Would Be Done Properly. The problem came in defining the term Properly."

"Oh yes. This was going to do well. If there was one thing Tsipis appreciated, it was a quick study. Ekaterin was one of those show once people whom Miles, in his mercenary days, had found more precious than unexpected oxygen in the emergency reserve."

"You couldn’t be that good and not know it, somewhere in your secret heart, however much you’d been abused into affecting public humility."

"My brother has this bad little habit of editing his version of reality to fit his audience."

"Miles was plenty expressive too, in his own unreliable way. Half of it was horseshit, but you were never sure which half."

"All Mark knew was that if it came down to a choice between Kareen and oxygen, he’d prefer to give up oxygen, thanks."

"“No money, but she’s beautiful, and her blood lines are impeccable.” “Are you choosing a wife, or buying a horse?”"

"“He told Mark he’s courting her in secret,” Martya put in to the Vorbrettens. “It’s a secret from her. We’re all still trying to figure that one out.” “Is the entire city party to my private conversations?” Miles snarled. “I’m going to strangle Mark.” Martya blinked at him with manufactured innocence. “Kareen had it from Mark. I had it from Ivan. Mama had it from Gregor. And Da had it from Pym. If you’re trying to keep a secret, Miles, why are you going around telling everyone?”"

"If you’re just now finding out that this world is unjust, well, you’re behind the times."

"You have to be careful who you let define your good."

"For her, this was a metaphor, he reminded himself. Though maybe he was a metaphor too, inside his head with the Black Gang. A metaphor gone metastatic. Metaphors could do that, under enough pressure."

"I could be a virgin again. What a dreadful thought."

"It is always easier to get forgiveness than permission."

"When you give each other everything, it becomes an even trade. Each wins all."

"You don’t pay back your parents. You can’t. The debt you owe them gets collected by your children, who hand it down in turn. It’s a sort of entailment. Or if you don’t have children of the body, it’s left as a debt to your common humanity. Or to your God, if you possess or are possessed by one."

"“There’s something to that in both directions,” said Ekaterin mildly. “Nothing is more guaranteed to make one start acting like a child than to be treated like one. It’s so infuriating. It took me the longest time to figure out how to stop falling into that trap.” “Yes, exactly,” said Kareen eagerly. “You understand! So—how did you make them stop?” “You can’t make them—whoever your particular them is—do anything, really,” said Ekaterin slowly. “Adulthood isn’t an award they’ll give you for being a good child. You can waste…years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just…take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I’m sorry you feel like that, and walk away. But that’s hard.”"

"“Heavens, Kareen, you don’t have to pay me—” “Never,” said Kareen with passion, “ever suggest they don’t have to pay you. What they pay for, they’ll value. What they get for free, they’ll take for granted, and then demand as a right. Hold them up for all the market will bear.”"

"She wondered when not dull had become her prime criterion for mate selection."

"I wanted to give you a victory. But by their essential nature triumphs can’t be given. They must be taken and the worse the odds and the fiercer the resistance, the greater the honor. Victories can’t be gifts."

"He lived, therefore he learned."

"Lately I have come to believe that the principal difference between heaven and hell is the company you keep there."

"“Is there anything else I can do for you, Madame Vorsoisson?” Illyan called after her, as she stood outside to let Nikki exit. She leaned back toward him to breathe venomously, “Yes. Hang Vormoncrief.” He offered her a sincere salute. “I shall do my humble best, Madame.”"

"“So…d’you like him? Or not?” Like was surely not an adequate word for this hash of delight and anger and longing, this profound respect laced with profound irritation, all floating on a dark pool of old pain. The past and the future, at war in her head. “I don’t know. Some of the time I do, yes, very much.” Another long pause. “Are you in love with him?” What Nikki knew of adult love, he’d mostly garnered off the holovid. Part of her mind readily translated this question as code for, Which way are you going to jump, and what will happen to me? And yet…he could not share or even imagine the complexity of her romantic hopes and fears, but he certainly knew how such stories were supposed to Come Out Right. “I don’t know. Some of the time. I think.” He favored her with his Big People Are Crazy look. In all, she could only agree."

"“Now, you had that doctorate in Barrayaran history. Do any really interesting District succession squabbles spring to your memory?” “Lord Midnight the horse,” Galeni replied at once. “Who always voted ‘neigh.’”"

"He carefully ignored his simmering fury. Rage had no place in this. Calculation and implacable action did."

"Reputation is what other people know about you. Honor is what you know about yourself."

"There is no more hollow feeling than to stand with your honor shattered at your feet while soaring public reputation wraps you in rewards. That’s soul-destroying. The other way around is merely very, very irritating."

"“No,” said his father, “you don’t have to smile. But if you’re really asking for advice from my accumulated experience, I’m saying Guard your honor. Let your reputation fall where it will. And outlive the bastards.”"

"“Honesty is the only way with anyone, when you’ll be so close as to be living inside each other’s skins. So…is this Ekaterin another passing fancy?” The Count hesitated, his eyes crinkling. “Or is she the one who will love my son forever and fiercely—hold his household and estates with integrity—stand beside him through danger, and dearth, and death—and guide my grandchildren’s hands when they light my funeral offering?”"

"“You? I know you! You trust beyond reason.” She met his eyes steadily. “Yes. It’s how I get results beyond hope. As you may recall.”"

"Gardens were meant to be seen, smelled, walked through, grubbed in. A hundred objective measurements didn’t sum the worth of a garden; only the delight of its users did that."

"A tactical retreat is not a bad response to a surprise assault, you know. First you survive. Then you choose your own ground. Then you counterattack."

"The trouble with oaths of the form, death before dishonor, is that eventually, given enough time and abrasion, they separate the world into just two sorts of people: the dead, and the forsworn."

"Even love is not as strong as habit, eh?"

"How can you stand me? I can’t even stand me."

"He smiled, recapturing her hand. “A very wise woman once told me—you just go on. I’ve never encountered any good advice that didn’t boil down to that, in the end. Not even my father’s.”"

"Government by thugs in the Bloody Centuries gave Barrayar many colorful historical incidents, suitable for high drama. I don’t think it’s a drama we wish to return to in real life."

"“So much for that line of reasoning, Lord Richars,” Ekaterin finished. She sat back with a hand-dusting gesture, and added, by no means under her breath, “Twit.”"

"If power was an illusion, wasn’t weakness necessarily one also?"

"Roots grow deep in the dark."

"“When he invited me to one for the Winterfair season, I wasn’t sure if it was hunting or social, and whether I should pack weapons or dresses.” Lady Vorpatril’s smile sharpened. “Dresses are weapons, my dear, in sufficiently skilled hands.”"

"“I am a bodyguard by trade,” she said, evidently continuing a conversation with Lady Vorpatril. “How can I kick someone’s teeth in wearing this?” “A woman wearing that suit, my dear, will have volunteers to kick in annoying persons’ teeth for her,” said Lady Alys."

"Life’s uncertain out there. Things can go down bad, fast, anytime. We all just get a time, in our different ways."

"“What would you do? If you discovered or suspected such a horror?” His lips twisted. “That’s a tough one. A higher honor must underlie ours, the count says. We can’t ever obey unthinkingly.” “Huh. That’s what Miles says, too. Is that where he got it, from his father?” “I shouldn’t be surprised. M’lord’s brother Mark says integrity is a disease, and you can only catch it from someone who has it.”"

"Your talent for making interesting new enemies has evidently not deserted you."

"I’d have worn them as a courtesy to your friend...I’ll wear them now as a defiance to our enemies."

"Taura nailed it. She'll do for m'lord, all right. And God help their enemies."

"I smell diplomacy. Miles grimaced."

"Military intelligence was as nothing to military stupidity."

"There were security angles, political angles, personal angles—how many angles could dance on the head of a pin?"

"“Anyway, he thinks we’re lying. But we’re not. Also, your people are idiots.” “Yes. I know. But they’re my idiots."

"What is it about you people who run sexually segregated fleets that makes you all disembark insane? No, don’t bother answering that, I think we all know. But the all-male military organizations who have that custom for religious or cultural reasons all come onto station leave like some horrible combination of kids let out of school and convicts let out of prison. The worst of both, actually—the judgment of children combined with the sexual deprivation of—never mind."

"There is a great deal of sanity to be saved in letting the past go, and moving on."

"“I will consider this contention,” said Greenlaw dryly, with the For about ten seconds, after which I shall toss it out the nearest airlock hanging unspoken."

"If you make it plain you like people, it’s hard for them to resist liking you back."

"Yet if the truth doesn’t serve us, what does that say about us, eh?"

"The dead cannot cry out for justice; it is a duty of the living to do so for them."

"He was borrowing trouble, reasoning in advance of his data."

"There’s nothing like the threat of imminent death to force one to delegate."

"“Not treason,” haut Pel objected faintly. “As such.” “Unsanctioned unilateral redesign, then.”"

"He stared at the two bundles more than filling his lap in a kind of cosmic amazement. “We did it,” he muttered to Ekaterin, now perching on the chair arm. “Why didn’t anybody stop us? Why aren’t there more regulations about this sort of thing? What fool in their right mind would put me in charge of a baby? Two babies?”"

"He had been the end point of human evolution. At this moment he abruptly felt more like a missing link. I thought I knew everything. Surely I knew nothing. How had his own life become such a surprise to him, so utterly rearranged? His brain had whirled with a thousand plans for these tiny lives, visions of the future both hopeful and dire, funny and fearful. For a moment, it seemed to come to a full stop. I have no idea who these two people are going to be."

"How many details had to point in the same direction before one decided they pointed true? Depends on how costly it is to be mistaken, maybe?"

"Puzzles. I hate puzzles. Ivan liked flowcharts—nice and clear and you could always tell just where you were and what you should do next, everything laid out neatly. No ambiguities. No traps. Why couldn’t life be more like flowcharts?"

"So far from a trudge, she seemed to find the task tolerably amusing. “Oh, languages aren’t work,” she explained cheerily. “They’re a game. Now, economics, that’s boring.”"

"Just because I have forgotten so many old enemies does not mean they have forgotten me."

"And in her way, I suppose, she loved us, and naturally wanted us to have this great thing she'd found, too. Except... I wasn't her. It was like... if she could just fix me into being her, then she could shower me with the gifts she so valued."

"“What’s a call girl?” asked Tej, her brows crimping in puzzlement. “Uh…” Ivan sought a translation. “Like a Betan licensed practical sexuality therapist, only without the licensed and the therapy parts.”"

"It was not a very original period of my life. I won’t say I fell in with bad company—I more hunted them down."

"As the week wore on, Ivan contemplated the merits of inertia as a problem-solving technique with growing favor."

"“Is that going to be a problem?” said Ivan. “Definitely. I just don’t know what kind, yet. Or whose.”"

"The admiral did not invite Ivan to sit, so Ivan took up a prudent sort-of parade rest and waited. Someone would tell him what was going on shortly; they always did, however little he wanted to know."

"It’s been a long time since I wagered so much on a single throw. Though if I’m to revisit the desperation of my youth, I want the body back, too."

"The limits of trust depend much on whether you mean to do business more than once."

"Let’s be sensible and wish for both of us there, while we’re wishing. I mean, it’s not like wishes are rationed."

"Maybe only love gave you more than what you’d dealt for."

"“You know what I like best about you, Ivan Xav?” she asked, newly shy in her illumination. He turned his chin into her hair in an inquiring sort of way. “My shiny groundcar? My Vorish insouciance? My astounding sexual prowess? My…my mother? Dear God, you’re not taking me for the sake of getting my um-stepfather?” “Well, I do like them both very much, but no. What I like best about you, Ivan Xav, is that you’re nice. And you make me laugh.” She smiled now, into his shoulder. “That…doesn’t seem like much.” He sounded a bit taken aback. “Yes,” she sighed, “but consider the context.”"

"There are two possible ways to solving a dilemma, in justice or elsewhere; begin with the facts, and follow out their logic where it leads one, or begin with the desired outcome, and reason backward to the necessary steps to achieve it."

"The most interesting question of history is always, What were these people thinking?"

"No amount of money can make one stay bought. Who does not freely choose to."

"A three-planet empire delivered upset snakes by the basket-load to this man’s office, every damned morning. Yeah—for all the talk of men coveting the emperor’s throne, Ivan had never yet heard anyone speak of coveting his desk."

"“What do you see in that Barrayaran boy, anyway?” the Baronne asked querulously, dodging back despite Tej’s best efforts. “He just doesn’t seem very ambitious.” “Mm,” said Tej. One woman’s defect is another woman’s delight? “I suppose…it’s all the things he sees in me.” That you don’t."

"In all, in truth, it was a problem for another day, Ivan decided. When life and chance handed you an afternoon as idyllic as this one promised to be, it seemed profoundly ungrateful not to pay attention."

"Everything in the district competes for resources. The best solution is to make more resources."

"“I didn’t know he had days off,” said Enrique, sounding vaguely puzzled. Naturally enough; Enrique didn’t exactly take breaks either, or at least not scheduled ones, his time being divided into days with too many things to do, and days with far too many things to do—much like her own, Ekaterin reflected ruefully."

"Shooting people to keep them from dying had logical flaws obvious to everyone."

"One couldn’t fix the past, only the present."

"“’S funny. Piotr, toward the end of his life, looked at our district and only saw how much better it was. All the backbreaking, heartbreaking work he did cleaning up the messes after the war is taken for granted now, or mostly just forgotten. Instead, we look around and only see how much better it could be. And neither of us is wrong, exactly.”"

"Is it still a victory if you don’t get the credit?"

"Only five days on this benighted world, and already total strangers are trying to kill me. Sadly, it wasn’t even a record."

"Don’t underestimate the viciousness of academics when funding is at stake."

"While not reliable enough to be put in charge of anything more complicated than a dishwasher, they were very easy to convince that all their troubles were someone else’s fault."

"Let me tell you, young man—the dirty little secret of democracy is that just because you get a vote, doesn’t mean you get your choice."

"Yani seemed a time-traveler who had found out the hard way that he did not like his destination any better than his point of departure, failed to notice the one common factor was himself, and now could not go back."

"Misplaced paranoia could be as great a mistake as misplaced faith."

"He supposed he shouldn’t think of it as Quick work, my Lord Auditor, from foreplay to coitus in one afternoon. But who was being screwed? And why, why, why was he being bribed?"

"“Old age,” she said, “is slower than a grenade, but a lot more thorough.”"

"He didn’t exactly have a plan, yet. More of a stab in the dark. He still wasn’t sure what his blade would connect with…"

"All the worry people expend over not existing after they die, yet nary a one ever seems to spare a moment to worry about not having existed before they were conceived. Or at all. After all, one sperm over and we would have been our sisters, and we’d never have been missed."

"His mystery, it seemed, had just split into two. Mystery mitosis. It seemed a retrograde sort of progress."

"He’d underestimated how much work normal healthy children would take, even with all the help his money and position could buy. For there were some tasks you didn’t want to delegate, because then you’d be missing the best parts."

"History does not so much repeat as echo, I suppose."

"“Never underestimate the human capacity for wishful thinking and willful blindness,” said Miles. Such as a whole society of people who became so wrapped up in avoiding death, they forgot to be alive?"

"I expect death will still be cheap and always available, doesn’t take high tech."

"“You’re pretty free with that thing.” “It’s all right. I have a license to stun.” “I thought that was supposed to be a license to kill.” Roic grimaced. “That too. But you would not believe all the forms that have to be filled out, afterward.”"

"She considered seventy-six. It…made no sense. Except that sometime in the past three years, she had switched from counting her years not up from birth, but back from death—a grab-bag of time not growing, but shrinking, use it or lose it."

"So what do you want? Really want, not just think is most prudent. Or worse, think is what I want."

"If nothing else, the arrival of actual children replaces theory with practice. And time to fret with…lack of time to breathe, sometimes."

"A contractor, early? Really? Already your tale begins to resemble some drunken hallucination."

"I admit, when I picture the scenario, I keep seeing a boy of about, oh, seven. Age of reason and all that. One I could talk to, and do things with. I’m not sure how you get from the single-cell stage to that one, though."

"Babies are just a challenge. Teenagers are a nightmare."

"It only takes one nutcase to decide that you, not he, are the reason his life sucks, and set out to even the score. Nutcases are not in short supply here."

"I don’t see people, young or otherwise, as having a right to be idiots. It’s just impractical to try to stop them, unless they’re hurting somebody, and this sport—extreme art?—does not appear to be lethal."

"No, do not let your fears eat the happiness in front of you. Or your grief consume your future? That was harder."

"There’s a paradox for you. Although really it’s no more than saying that I’m satisfied with my life. Changing anything would wish people I’ve loved out of existence, and yet…there would have been other people, I suppose. Who now will never be."

"“We used to call the biowar intelligence and analysis section at ImpSec HQ the Nightmare Barn,” Miles reminisced. “In a large building full of pale, overcaffeinated men, they had a reputation as being the pastiest and the twitchiest.”"

"“Everybody has it wrong way round. Parents don’t make children—children make parents. They shape our behavior from the first wail. Mold us into what they need. It can be a pretty rough process, too.” Jole’s eyebrows went up. “I’d not thought of it that way.” It seemed a strangely hopeful notion. “Well, believe it. Though my whole life has been on-the-job training—I don’t know why I thought this should be any different.”"

"By far the most dangerous animal on the planet was an invasive species of ape."

"Alas, she was dealing with management, not the engineers."

"One of the best things about writing is how it redeems, not to mention recycles, all of one's prior experiences, including — or perhaps especially — the failures."

"I have a catchphrase to describe my plot-generation technique — "What's the worst possible thing I can do to these people?""

"I am increasingly convinced that technological culture is the entire root of women's liberation."

"Parallels, spirals, and reflections are some of my favorite literary patterns."

"Reading is an active and elusive experience. Every reader, reading exactly the same text, will have a slightly different reading experience depending on what s/he projects into the words s/he sees, what strings of meaning and association those words call up in his/her (always) private mind. One can never therefore, talk about the quality of a book separately from the quality of the mind that is creating it by reading it, in the only place books live, in the secret mind."

"I have no idea why some of my books draw awards and others don't, except that the ones I spent the least time worrying about other people's response to — that I wrote for myself — seem to do the best of all."

"Not all books are created equal, and for the special ones, you begin to know it sometimes even before the work is finished, but always by the time you slam that last line home and shriek, "Done! Done!," and fall head-down across your keyboard like the runner from Marathon."

"I've always tried to write the kind of book I most loved to read: character-centered adventure."

"I attack both from the logic-side, scribbling outline after outline, and the long-walk relaxed-visualization-side, and while neither alone is enough, the combination synergizes. Which is just a fancy way of saying, "I think about it a lot, day and night.""

"From fried witchetty grubs to gold-plated turnips, when you're a writer you never know what's going to appear on your plate next. It keeps a woman alert, it does."

"If you desire a man to tell you comfortable lies about your prowess, and so fetter any hope of true excellence, I'm sure you may find one anywhere. Not all prisons are made of iron bars. Some are made of feather beds."

"Right or wrong, what I also saw was that you made an enemy, and left him alive behind you. Great charity. Bad tactics."

"The joys of command — well, you know. You taught them to me. One part glory to ten parts shoveling manure."

"The gods' most savage curses come upon us as answers to our own prayers, you know."

"But have you really understood how powerless the gods are, when the lowest slave may exclude them from his heart? And if from his heart, then from the world as well, for the gods may not reach in except through living souls. If the gods could seize passage from anyone they wished, then men would be mere puppets. Only if they borrow or are given will from a willing creature, do they have a little channel through which to act."

"I think it (i. e., sainthood) is not so much the growth of virtue, as simply the replacement of prior vices with an addiction to one's god."

"He found oddly little regret in his heart for his own lost life. He'd seen more of the world than most men ever did, and he'd had his chances, though the gods knew he'd made little enough of them. Marshaling his thoughts, as he sheltered under his covers, he realized with some wonder that his greatest dismay was for the work he'd be forced to leave undone."

"The confusion of mind you dub honor is a disease."

"I for one find a casual destruction of a man's life even more repugnant than a determined one."

"Only the saints would joke so about the gods, because it was either joke or scream, and they alone knew it was all the same to the gods."

"Ignorance is not stupidity, but it might as well be."

"Second sight is redundant to reason anyway."

"Just what kind of noose are you offering to put round my neck, here? Is this treason?" "Worse," Cazaril sighed. "Theology."

"Events may be horrible or inescapable. Men have always a choice - if not whether, then how, they may endure."

"Surely only correct understanding could lead to correct action."

"And you could just watch men begin to see what he told them they were seeing, whether it was there or not."

""Mercy from the Father and the Mother, mercy from the Sister and the Brother, Mercy from the Bastard, five times mercy, High Ones, we beseech you."… Mercy, High Ones. Not justice, please, not justice. We would all be fools to pray for justice."

"A skilled soldier kills your enemies, but a skilled duelist kills your allies."

"I don't duel, boy. I kill as a soldier kills, which is as a butcher kills, as quickly, efficiently, and with as least risk to myself as I can arrange. If I decide you die, you will die when I choose, where I choose, by what means I choose, and you will never see the blow coming. (...) I don't duel. But if you seek to die like a bludgeoned steer, cross me again."

"The shocked silence that followed was decidedly baffled. And even, possibly, a little thoughtful, if that was not too much to hope."

"You can't solve problems by running away from them, it was said, and like the good child she had once been, she had believed this. But it wasn't true. Some problems could only be solved by running away from them."

"And the Bastard grant us . . . in our direst need, the smallest gifts: the nail of the horseshoe, the pin of the axle, the feather at the pivot point, the pebble at the mountain's peak, the kiss in despair, the one right word. In darkness, understanding."

"The gods...the gods may forgive much, to a truly penitent heart." Her smile grew bitter as desert brine. "The gods may forgive Ista all day long. But if Ista does not forgive Ista, the gods may go hang themselves.""

"You must go home eventually." "I would throw myself off a precipice first, except that I would land in the arms of the gods, Whom I do not wish to see again."

"A stunning first impression was not the same thing as love at first sight. But surely it was an invitation to consider the matter."

"The entire center of her life was a blackened waste, its long years not to be recovered nor replaced."

"The gods give no gifts without hooks embedded."

"So, you dragged me here, whichever of You harries me. But you cannot force me through that door. Nor can you open it yourselves. You cannot lift so much as a leaf; bending iron or my will is a task equally beyond your capacities. They were at a stand, she and the gods."

"I have denied my eyes, both inner and outer. I am not a child, or virgin, or modest wife, fearing to offend. No one owns my eyes now but me. If I have not the stomach by now to look upon any sight in the world, good or evil, beautiful or vile, when shall I? It is far too late for innocence. My only hope is the much more painful consolation of wisdom. Which can grow out of knowledge alone. Give me my true eyes. I want to see. I have to know."

"I would be considerably more impressed with your god, dy Cabon," said Ista through her teeth, "if He could have arranged one life's worth of simple protection in advance, rather than three hundred lives' worth of gaudy vengeance afterward."

"Such a perilous concentration of demons would create chaos all around it." "War gathers on these borders," said Ista. "A greater concentration of chaos I can hardly imagine."

"He gave me no sign. I was never the sort to receive portents, or to delude myself that I had. Silence was always my portion, in return for my prayers."

"You are a most excellent lawyer, for a dead man."

"One learns better than to hand one's choices to fear. With age, with every wound and scar, one learns."

"The gods would take him and leave me bereft, and I curse them!" "I have cursed them for years," said Ista dryly. "Turnabout being fair."

"We are all, every living one of us, doorways between the two realms, that of matter that gives us birth, and that of spirit into which we are born in death."

"An hour will suffice. If it is the right hour."

"...your soul is your own, now, to make of what you will. We are all of us, every one, our own works: we present our souls to our Patrons at the ends of our lives as an artisan presents the works of his hands."

"One scarcely knows if he would be of more use to us as a hostage, or set loose to be a very bad enemy leader."

"Too little payment for a crime, too much for an accident."

"Boleso’s men, Ingrey was reminded, were out of the habit of questioning the sense of their superiors’ orders. Or perhaps it was that any who dared were got rid of, one way or another, and these were the remainder. Residue. Scum."

"“Your pleasure, my lord?” he inquired nervously. To be anywhere but here, doing anything but this."

"So when Audar the so-called Great slaughtered four thousand Wealding prisoners of war at Bloomfield, it’s said he didn’t pray at all. That made it a proper Quintarian act, I suppose, and not heresy. Some other crime, perhaps, but not human sacrifice. One of those theological fine points."

"It still felt like hauling buckets from a well of memory with a rope that burned his hands."

"Indifference served him quite as well as integrity."

"Those who are unwilling to admit error are fated to repeat it?"

"Oswin was the most perfect servant of the Father, always so concerned for figuring out the exact rules and getting himself on the right side of them. Or them on the left side of him."

"I saw no reason to stop my life for other people’s theories."

"All sorts of men had the capacity to kill for the convenience of their betters; though usually, the only spell required could be fitted in a clinking purse."

"All my life I have prayed, and all my life I have been refused answer. I scarcely believed in the gods anymore, or if I did, it was only to curse them for their indifference. They betrayed my father, who had served Them loyally all his life. They betrayed my mother, or They were powerless to save her, which was as bad or worse. If a god has come to me, He certainly hasn’t come for me!"

"“High court politics,” said Ingrey slowly, “are as godless as anything I know.”"

"“And what guidance did you receive for all your prayers, lady?” She bit her lip. “None.”"

"But have you ever overheard two women discussing men? Men are crude liars, comparing their drabs, but women—I'd rather have a Mother's anatomist dissect me alive than to listen to the things the ladies say about us when they think they are alone."

"It is as much an error to take truth for lies, as lies for truth."

"It is not, you know, that you lie well, cousin. It’s merely that no one is foolhardy enough to call you on it. This may have given you an inflated idea of your skill at dissimulation."

"I do not know where I am going. But I am quite weary enough of where I’ve been."

"Magical powers worked sometimes; material powers worked all the time."

"The gods have no hands in this world but ours. If we fail Them, where then can They turn?"

"Her lips curved up. “That’s very Ingrey of you, Ingrey. Always look on the dark side.”"

"Such corruption feeds on its own success when it meets no correction."

"So much of the uncanny—or the holy, for that matter—is inward experience. As such, testimony about it tends to be tainted. People lie. People delude themselves, or others. People are swayed or frightened or convinced they have seen things they have not. People are, frankly, sometimes simply mad."

"Oh, fine new friends you have—until They betray you. If the gods toy with you, cousin, it is for Their ends, not yours."

"“It must have been an interesting chat. Did Cumril survive it?” “Temporarily.”"

"“Do you fear the gods will destroy you?” That disturbing smile again. “That is not a fear. That is a prayer.” “Or…do you fear their punishment? That they would plunge your soul into some eternal torment?” Wencel leaned forward, up on his toes. “That,” he breathed in Ingrey’s ear, “would be redundant.”"

"I learned long ago not to exhaust myself grappling problems that time will carry away on its tide."

"If there is one thing that I have come to hate more than the gods, it is time."

"But even the gods cannot see infinitely far ahead. Our free wills cloud Their vision, even though Their eyes are more piercing than ours. The gods do not plan, so much as take advantage."

"“Inventing as you go, are you?” “Yes, I am quite godlike in that way, if no other.”"

"It was lately suggested to me, by a man with longer experience of the gods than I can rightly imagine, that the reason the gods do not show our paths more plainly is that They do not know either. I haven’t decided if I find this reassuring or the reverse. It does hint they do not torment us solely for Their amusement, at least."

"Talking to the gods had been a much more comfortable proposition when there had seemed no danger of Their talking back."

"Taste the betrayal of the gods, then; I have dined on it for ages."

"Four thousand, so many! It matters less where I begin, as that I begin."

"Heaven weeps, but free will is sacred. The meaning of yes is created by the ability to say no."

"The sharpest fall of all, from life to death."

"“Hair shirts, really, what is the point?” She gave the impression of a faint, dramatic shudder, and Pen smiled despite himself. She added more tartly, “And it indicates a deep confusion of thinking to mistake one’s own discomfort for a benefit to another.”"

"A well-practiced prayer that he knew how to do. So he did, whispering the words aloud. In all, he was relieved that no one answered."

"It occurred to him that the attitude of supplication was identical to that of surrender on a battlefield."

"The gods do not act for our ends, but for Theirs."

"I’d sent to my superiors in Whippoorwill twice, but have got no reply yet. And written to the divines in the neighbor vales. One said he could not help, and the other…was less helpful.” Gallen grimaced. “My prayers have fared no better.”"

"Everyone talks to the gods, no one expects them to answer."

"A few other works, half of which turn out to be rubbish. Always a problem with written sources, which frequently tell you far more about the person who wrote them than the subject addressed."

"Earthworms are theologically neutral creatures, as far as I know."

"I won’t dismiss it from the list just yet. But it needs verification. Everything needs verification."

"The world is not always so friendly a place that you can afford to squander your advantages on a pointless conceit."

"I can think of no greater nightmare than to lose my ability to read."

"Pen cleared his throat. “Do you normally try to murder people you’ve just met?” Although that was what a soldier did, he supposed."

"Perhaps the absence of risk should not be mistaken for the presence of fortitude."

"Pen wondered at a world that hanged poor men for thievery, but celebrated great ones."

"This demon seemed slow to deploy even the most basic magics, but maybe dolphins didn’t think in terms of arson."

"The princess-archdivine once quipped to me that our friends are what the gods give us to make up for our families."

"Dying is easy. Surviving is hard."

"Reform is resisted by everyone who has an interest in it not taking place at their expense."

"You’re worse than evil. You’re inefficient."

"Don’t promote your troubles beyond your rank."

"No prayer addressed to my god ever returned any useful insight."

"Mira does not gossip about her clients. Very rigid rule, I gather. The highest rank of Lodi courtesans don’t; that’s part of how they became the highest rank."

"Nikys had never believed that clothes made the man, but the lack of them certainly did."

"Des, it seemed, was much less terrified by this return to Cedonia than he was. Of course, a demon could not be killed exactly. Are you saying I would be a surprise? Oh, Pen. You have been a surprise from the beginning."

"Assassins can cross borders where armies can’t."

"Penric smiled and advanced, feeling dimly that the first thing a man said to his intended’s respected mother probably shouldn’t be Quick, take your clothes off!"

"It didn’t seem wise to assume all had gone as planned."

"He wouldn’t say pray, as he’d decided long ago not to bother the gods with questions when he didn’t really want to hear the answers."

"One gives you the shirt off his back, mused Des, and the other offers to help you bury bodies. I do believe you have made some new friends, Pen!"

"Time. It did not wait for any human want, or grief, or plan. Or careful list. Nearly half her life might be behind her already. It was time to get started on the next half."

"And that was just how it worked, wasn’t it? Happiness handed around and around, never stopping. It wasn’t something one could hoard tight like a miser. That would be like trying to hold one’s breath for later."

"Just once, Pen thought glumly, he’d like to get an answer to prayers, instead of being delivered as one."

"Pen spared a moment of fresh loathing for the sectarian idiocy that made even children afraid."

"Some poetic epics extolled heroism in warriors; Adelis the actual soldier put his faith in logistics."

"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times begins to seem like a message to be ignored at one’s peril."

"Pen would pray to his God for guidance, but he never did get any back when he did that, so he supposed he must use his own judgment."

"She made the best of herself through tidiness and health, not by the unearned gift that’s the blessing and curse of those born beautiful."

"“Five gods avert,” said Rede. And then, after a pensive moment, “Do They?” “Not that I can tell,” said Pen. “I’ve sometimes wondered if the gods regard death not as a dreaded ending, but as a welcome beginning.” “Of what?” “I am deeply not sure. Which doesn’t stop people from making up a thousand tales.”"

"It turns out languages are like children. Once you have six, adding a seventh hardly makes any difference."

"Don’t borrow trouble the interest rate is much too high."

"“This is why medicine can’t be my calling,” said Pen dimly. “The demand is endless, and I’ve learned I am not. Only the gods could deal with all the world’s pain, all at once, all the time. It’s a wonder they’re not driven mad. Unless they have been, which would explain some things. Theologically speaking.”"

"There were many Temple sorcerers in great Thasalon, which drew all men of ambition to it, whether like flies to honey or to manure a matter of opinion."

"“I thought you already knew everything.” “Knowledge is not the same thing as understanding. I have a profound need to understand. Everything.”"

"The man was embezzling demons?"

"His further study of humanity had revealed just how much people could convince themselves that their own needs were those of the gods, and not the other way around."

"I did not say that well, Pen fretted. No, said Des thoughtfully as they turned away, but you said it true. Which is better, and more rare."

"“A quagmire of delay,” Lady Xarre observed, “has trapped efforts at righting wrongs before.”"

"No tactical plan should hinge on one’s enemy making the right mistake."

"Really, murmured Des, Tronio is like a chicken that brought its own pot and onions."

"Tolga guided him not to the morgue, but to a patient chamber alloted mostly to a dozen crippled old indigent men, some brought in to be healed, some to die. For a beggar, Pen was not entirely sure it was a better death than in an alley or under a bridge; death was never a comfortable process, despite cots and sheets and usually overworked attendants, and it took longer here."

"She used to ask, 'Why did the gods give [my son] to me if they were only going to take him away?' Learned Retaka never had an answer. "No," said Pen slowly, "that's backward. The gods do not give us our children. We give our children to the gods.""

"Over and over in his career, Pen had confronted the insight that the gods did not care for humans' material concerns, much to the humans' dismay. Only with what record of them was carved into their souls by their unique and individual lives, presented as the final offering upon the alter of their deaths. All deaths, in whatever form. One by one, each attended to with the same singular consideration. Each valuated with the discernment of a connoisseur adding to his collection. Each placed in the niche found most fitting to it. Denied by self-will sometimes, by the gods' will at others, but never lost by carelessness."

"We see the world not as it is, but as we are. ~ Dag Redwing Hickory Bluefield"

"Her eyes were full of new; it made them brighter."

"Words won't break bones seemed like the lying-est lie Barr had ever been told, as a child. Bones knit eventually, he knew from close personal experience. The scars of slander, an insult not just delivered but believed, might never heal in a lifetime."

""Thing is... she may get mad, but she isn't whiny or naggy about it. She doesn't store it up like a, a compost heap, all hot on the inside and rotting. She's angry like she has a right, and no one disputes it." She added after a moment, "Or tells her to be a good girl, or be quiet, or apologize. Or go to her room" ~ Lily Mason, on why she admires Captain Amma"

"I don't take information and experience into my mind in that organized a fashion, but when I want to bring it out, somehow it's there. You write what you know because — like there's another choice? The trick is to try and know as much as possible."

"I am a much better person and a better writer having had my children than I would be otherwise. I would have missed a whole aspect of the human experience that's tremendously fundamental to things like characterization. A lot of writers write as if the hero sort of popped out of the box at age 22 fully formed. And one thing that raising children does is give you some sense of how human beings really are put together. So when you go to put together a character you can have a more realistic sense of where people really come from, why they really behave the way they do and what a tremendous amount of life and complexity lies behind every human being. But I think you can get that from being a father too. I think it's something you can do by growing up and being observant even if you don't have children."

"Don't worry about that depressing old dictum "Write what you know". If you need to know something, look it up. Learn how to find out what you need to know to make it right. Be passionate, be picky, have enough self-criticism to demand of yourself your best and not sort of let it slide by. And remember that the greatest defect any piece of fiction can have is not to be finished."

"Some fortunate, prolific writers seem to be able, efficiently, to keep several projects going at once; it appears I am not one of them."

"I don’t write stories to tell readers what to think, or even tell them what I think; I write stories to show me what I think. Writing is always a journey of discovery that way, as suspenseful for me as I hope it will be for the audience."

"Lots of us SF-types like the idea of traveling to the Future (although, having now done so once myself -- the hard way -- I’m less sure), but why do we imagine the Future would want us? Oh, a few 21st-century Icemen, perhaps, as historical curiosities, but in our hundreds of millions? It would be like the greatest wave of immigration ever, but from the past into other people’s Now. It might seem to them like sacrificing resources needed for their children to their great-great-great-grandparents. Counter-evolutionary, among other things."

"The writer should always reserve the right to have a better idea."

"It's an interesting problem, though, for writers of popular series. Should one throw one's protagonist over the Reichenbach Falls, or let him fade gently into the sunset of the Sussex Downs, keeping bees? (Or both?) No matter which the writer chooses, someone will be unhappy about it. If one's audience is large enough, it will collectively demand every possible closure, most mutually exclusive."

"Read, or you will be missing something extraordinary."

"The apparently effortless fluidity of both style and story may actually have mitigated against critical notice, in comparison to notorious stylists like William Gibson, or, again, Ursula Le Guin. But, despite Bujold's space opera plots, the flashes of humour rare either in Le Guin or in SF as a whole, and the steady pigeonholing of her work as military SF, her similarities to Le Guin go far beyond the presence of that wall. Firstly, both are consummate character-builders. Indeed, characterization, emphasis on character, and plots that depend on character and the novums of technology are among Bujold's strongpoints. Nowhere does this emerge more clearly than if her work is taken as military SF and compared to that of writers like Jerry Pournelle or David Weber."

"I got the same sort of feeling reading her works as I had gotten from classic Heinlein: a renewed faith in humanity and a desire to explore and do good in the universe. Great feeling."

"Conservatives have a problem with women. For that matter, all men do."

"My libertarian friends are probably getting a little upset now but I think that's because they never appreciate the benefits of local fascism."

"I have to say I'm all for public flogging. One type of criminal that a public humiliation might work particularly well with are the juvenile delinquents, a lot of whom consider it a badge of honor to be sent to juvenile detention. And it might not be such a cool thing in the 'hood' to be flogged publicly."

"I think there should be a literacy test and a poll tax for people to vote."

"I am emboldened by my looks to say things Republican men wouldn't."

"No wonder you guys lost."

"Her children knew she's sleeping with all these men. That just seems to me, it's the definition of "not a good mother." … Is everyone just saying here that it's okay to ostentatiously have premarital sex in front of your children? … [Diana is] an ordinary and pathetic and confessional — I've never had bulimia! I've never had an affair! I've never had a divorce! So I don't think she's better than I am."

"If those kids had been carrying guns they would have gunned down this one gunman. … Don't pray. Learn to use guns."

"We were terrified that Jones would settle. It was contrary to our purpose of bringing down the president."

"If we're going to have sex crimes, it cannot be that people are allowed to lie about sex. Rape, child molestation, sodomy, indecent, exposure, prostitution-these are all sex crimes. People may have disagreements with the substantive law-for example, by opposing the application of sexual harassment laws to politicians who are "good" on abortion-but whatever the substantive law is, it is not okay to lie in a judicial proceedings. The laws cannot be abstracted from the judicial proceedings necessary to enforce the law If lying about sex doesn't count. then there cannot be sex crimes."

"Southerners are truly our warrior class."

"That was the theme of the Million Mom March: I don't need a brain — I've got a womb."

"The New York Times is cheering the decision of Mount Holyoke College to stop requiring that students submit their SAT scores for admission, ending what the Times calls "the tyranny of the big test." While conceding that the SAT measures "mental dexterity," the editorial complains that the test does not capture qualities such as "motivation" or what the student "learned in high school." The SAT also doesn't measure compassion, speed or good looks. It does, however, measure something more than the ability to suck up to your high school teachers and guidance counselors."

"It is true that some percentage of bright people really do not test well, but most of the time the only thing about "common man's intelligence" that is indubitably true is that it is common. The concept of some ephemeral, elusive nonverbal intelligence simply allows one to impute intelligence to anyone who strikes your fancy. … Eliminating standardized tests allows the cognitive elite to manipulate the soft stuff in ways the less-often-washed cannot. Mount Holyoke has accomplished nothing more than replacing a tyranny of merit with a tyranny of privilege."

"In his fawning hagiography of Teddy Kennedy, Clymer wrote that Kennedy's liberal voting record made up for his killing that girl at Chappaquiddick. I didn't believe it either, but Clymer actually wrote: Kennedy's "achievements as a senator have towered over his time, changing the lives of far more Americans than remember the name Mary Jo Kopechne." (A review in The Washington Monthly said Clymer's Chappaquiddick section did "not sugarcoat his subject's flaws.") This is the way addled liberals really think. Even as they champion sucking the brains out of little babies, they think of themselves as indelibly compassionate because they favor an overweening, behemoth federal government."

"The ethic of conservation is the explicit abnegation of man's dominion over the Earth. The lower species are here for our use. God said so: Go forth, be fruitful, multiply, and rape the planet — it's yours. That's our job: drilling, mining and stripping. Sweaters are the anti-Biblical view. Big gas-guzzling cars with phones and CD players and wet bars — that's the Biblical view."

"Liberals are always frightened by diversity of opinion. They think a fair way to decide passionately contested issues is for the federal government to issue uncompromising edicts giving liberals everything they want, and then to suppress all criticism of the edicts. The fascistic order, completely supplanting all democratic processes, is then known as a victory for "choice." As the Grand Inquisitor said in The Brothers Karamazov: "They have vanquished freedom and have done so to make men happy." That's what the Supreme Court did in Roe vs. Wade, and has repeatedly done in periodic codicils to its original edict. Just this past term, in Stenberg vs. Carhart, the court expanded the apocryphal abortion right to an all-new right to stick a fork in the head of a half-born baby. The first lunacy keeps being rewritten to give abortion enthusiasts everything they could possibly want."

"You remember what a fabulous success court-ordered "desegregation" plans have been. Few failures have been more spectacular. Illiterate students knifing one another between acts of sodomy in the stairwell is just one of the many eggs that had to be broken to make the left's omelette of transferring power from states to the federal government."

"I think [women] should be armed but should not vote … women have no capacity to understand how money is earned. They have a lot of ideas on how to spend it … it's always more money on education, more money on child care, more money on day care."

"God gave us the earth. We have dominion over the plants, the animals, the trees. God said, "Earth is yours. Take it. Rape it. It's yours.""

"The presumption of innocence only means you don't go right to jail."

"Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now. We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren't punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That's war. And this is war."

"After the World Trade Center was bombed by Islamic fundamentalists in 1993, the country quickly chalked it up to a zany one-time attack and five minutes later decided we were all safe again. We weren't. We aren't now. They will strike again. Perhaps they will wait another eight years. But perhaps not. The enemy is in this country right now. And any terrorists who are not already here are free to immigrate."

"Not all Muslims may be terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims — at least all terrorists capable of assembling a murderous plot against America that leaves 7,000 people dead in under two hours. How are we to distinguish the peaceful Muslims from the fanatical, homicidal Muslims about to murder thousands of our fellow citizens?"

"A cruise missile is more important than Head Start."

"Taxes are like abortion, and not just because both are grotesque procedures supported by Democrats. You're for them or against them. Taxes go up or down; government raises taxes or lowers them. But Democrats will not let the words abortion or tax cuts pass their lips."

"When contemplating college liberals, you really regret once again that John Walker is not getting the death penalty. We need to execute people like John Walker in order to physically intimidate liberals, by making them realize that they can be killed, too. Otherwise, they will turn out to be outright traitors."

"Point one and point two by the end of the week had become official government policy. As for converting them to Christianity, I think it might be a good idea to get them on some sort of hobby other than slaughtering infidels. I mean perhaps that's the Peace Corps, perhaps it's working for Planned Parenthood, but I've never seen the transforming effect of anything like that of Christianity."

"There are a lot of bad Republicans; there are no good Democrats."

"But I do think the posting of gay unions is a little bit ridiculous. And I think it looks like a parody out of "The Onion." Will they be showing them, you know, in full regalia getting dressed? Will we know which one is keeping his last name? I mean, I just think it's not doing a service to gays. I think it makes them look ridiculous."

"But, no, I mean, the wedding pages, they're always done for the bride's sake. I think most grooms find the whole wedding ceremony something, you know, they're forced to go through and a little bit preposterous. So, I'm having -- having two grooms, I just can't imagine anyone wanting that. I'd just as soon get out of it altogether. I would take that as one of the advantages of being gay and not try to get in on it."

"I think the contracts are different from these photos. I mean, contractual benefits I can see a good argument for. Photos in the "New York Times" nuptial section, that's just embarrassing."

"My only regret with Timothy McVeigh is he did not go to the New York Times building."

"Liberals hate America, they hate flag-wavers, they hate abortion opponents, they hate all religions except Islam, post 9/11. Even Islamic terrorists don't hate America like liberals do. They don't have the energy. If they had that much energy, they'd have indoor plumbing by now."

"If liberals were prevented from ever again calling Republicans dumb, they would be robbed of half their arguments. To be sure, they would still have "racist," "fascist," "homophobe," "ugly," and a few other highly nuanced arguments in the quiver. But the loss of "dumb" would nearly cripple them."

"Liberals hate religion because politics is a religion substitute for liberals and they can't stand the competition."

"There's a reason the left's rhetoric bears such a striking resemblance to some of the nuttier religions: Abhorring real religions, liberals refuse to condemn what societies have condemned for thousands of years — e.g., promiscuity, divorce, illegitimacy, homosexuality. Consequently the normal human instinct to condemn something bubbles up against a legion of quite modern vices, such as smoking, fur, red meat, excessive consumption, and land development."

"Most devastating for the left as a cohesive political movement was the collapse of their beloved Soviet Union. For decades the Great Issue uniting various forces on the left, from proclaimed communists to soft anti-communists, was the socialist "ideal." … Apart from global warming — coming in a thousand years to a planet near you! — the left's only remaining cause is abortion. For many Democrats, Roe v. Wade is the essence of politics."

"Where there is a vacuum of ideas, paranoia slips in. Much of the left's hate speech bears greater similarity to a psychological disorder than to standard political discourse. The hatred is blinding, producing logical contradictions that would be impossible to sustain were it not for the central element faith plays in the left's new religion. The basic tenet of their faith is this: Maybe they were wrong about their facts and policies, but they are good and conservatives are evil. You almost want to give it to them. It's all they have left."

"Grove quotes me – and the quotes are things I actually said! That is stunningly rare. … What liberals normally do in response to a principled conservative argument is lie, manufacture quotes, and call conservatives names – as some dissolute drunk did in the New York Post a few days later. The left's logic deficit is a topic I explore thoroughly in my book. Buy it and prepare to have your blood run hot. Oh, and for the record, Howard Kurtz is wrong about the reason I call him the Liberal Ombudsman for Liberal Media Bias in my book – it was not the "girly-boy" quote. Paradoxically, that is the ONLY time Kurtz has quoted me accurately."

"The reason propaganda works is that most people are too involved or too stupid to recognize it as propaganda. People claim to understand the bias and filter it out, but that's absurd. Of course they don't."

"Though Rather is congenitally bad – an admirable heir to Walter Cronkite and his special form of treasonous broadcasting – more insidious are certain chirpy girl-next-door morning TV hosts who characterize the beliefs of ordinary middle-class Americans in terms that would make Goebbels blush."

"Liberals don't read books – they don't read anything … That's why they're liberals. They watch TV, absorb the propaganda, and vote on the basis of urges."

"Liberals' only remaining big issue is abortion because of their beloved sexual revolution. That's their cause: Spreading anarchy and polymorphous perversity. Abortion permits that."

"We should be fingerprinting environmentalists … As for what can be done to convince Americans that we face an enemy that hates America as much as the terrorists, we should put people like Ann Coulter on TV more, stop with the infernal nonsense of thinking liberals are decent but misguided people, and characterize the threat appropriately. … Start by telling the truth about them: They are out to destroy the country."

"I was not enthusiastic about the last Gulf war. Of course, it goes without saying, I rooted for our team once the shooting started. But I wasn't for that war. I was also against sending Americans to the Balkans. My point is, I'm genuinely against America deploying troops without a really, really good reason. I just can't imagine anyone not seeing 9/11 as a really good reason for wiping out Islamic totalitarians."

"It would be a much better country if women did not vote. That is simply a fact. In fact, in every presidential election since 1950 — except Goldwater in '64 — the Republican would have won, if only the men had voted."

"This is my idea. I'm way ahead of you. I think airlines ought to start advertising: 'We have the most civil rights lawsuits brought against us by Arabs.'"

"They could use magic carpets."

"If Chicago had been hit, I assure you New Yorkers would not have cared. What was stunning when New York was hit was how the rest of America rushed to New York's defense. New Yorkers would have been like, "It's tough for them; now let's go back to our Calvin Klein fashion shows.""

"Gay sex may well be a mystery of life, but I’ll be damned if I can find it in the Constitution."

"Between issuing laws prohibiting discrimination against transgendered individuals and running up a $38 billion deficit, the California Legislature mandated a three-week immersion course in Islam for all seventh-graders."

"My argument is that there's nothing about same-sex marriage in the Constitution. I don't think I have taken a position on same-sex marriage. Very simple. I sort of resent being pulled into these things. I'm writing about foreign policy. I'm writing about liberals, but every time the Supreme Court gets some new flight of fancy, suddenly, I have to come up with a white paper policy position. Not with this audience, but be I think it is worth mentioning in --... well, I guess the three of you, the three liberals here. What do you think sodomy is great thing and gays should be married, it's not in the Constitutions, and every time the Supreme Court rules on something that is not in the Constitution, it's taking your rights away. You might like it today, but someday, I could have my conservative activists on the court."

"As I have said when it first came up at the moment, I don't, because what's the point? We already have a Constitution and they don't read that. Are we just going to keep adding to the Constitution?"

"Out of respect for my gay male readers, I'll resist the temptation to characterize this ruling as "shoving gay marriage down our throats.""

"You would think there were "Straights Only" water fountains the way Democrats carry on so (as if any gay man would drink nonbottled water)"

"Then there are the 22 million Americans on food stamps. And of course there are the 39 million greedy geezers collecting Social Security. The greatest generation rewarded itself with a pretty big meal."

"Whenever a liberal begins a statement with "I don't know which is more frightening," you know the answer is going to be pretty clear."

"While consistently rooting against America, liberals have used a fictional event forged of their own hysteria — "McCarthyism" — to prevent Americans from ever asking the simple question: Do liberals love their country?"

"Liberals chose Man. Conservatives chose God."

"The portrayal of Senator Joe McCarthy as a wild-eyed demagogue destroying innocent lives is sheer liberal hobgoblinism. Liberals weren't cowering in fear during the McCarthy era. They were systematically undermining the nation's ability to defend itself while waging a bellicose campaign of lies to blacken McCarthy's name. Everything you think you know about McCarthy is a hegemonic lie. Liberals denounced McCarthy because they were afraid of getting caught, so they fought back like animals to hide their own collaboration with a regime as evil as the Nazis."

""McCarthyism" means pointing out positions taken by liberals that are unpopular with the American people. As former President Bush said, "Liberals do not like me talking about liberals." The reason they sob about the dark night of fascism under McCarthy is to prevent Americans from ever noticing that liberals consistently attack their own country."

"Liberals have a preternatural gift for striking a position on the side of treason."

"Ozzy Osbourne has his bats, and I have that darn "convert them to Christianity" quote. Some may not like what I said, but I'm still waiting to hear a better suggestion."

"One hundred percent of terrorist attacks on commercial airlines based in America for 20 years have been committed by Muslims. When there is a 100 percent chance, it ceases to be a profile. It's called a 'description of the suspect.'"

"Conservatives believe man was created in God's image, while liberals believe they are gods. All of the behavioral tics of the liberals proceed from their godless belief that they can murder the unborn because they, the liberals, are themselves gods. They try to forcibly create "equality" through affirmative action and wealth redistribution because they are gods. They flat-out lie, with no higher power to constrain them, because they are gods. They adore pornography and the mechanization of sex because man is just an animal, and they are gods. They revere the U.N. and not the U.S. because they aren't Americans — they are gods."

"The Episcopals don't demand much in the way of actual religious belief. They have girl priests, gay priests, gay bishops, gay marriages — it's much like The New York Times editorial board. They acknowledge the Ten Commandments — or "Moses' talking points" — but hasten to add that they're not exactly "carved in stone.""

"All the Democrats are for higher taxes. All of them are in favor of Hillary's socialist health-care plan. All of them are for higher pay for teachers and nurses — and no pay at all for anyone in the pharmaceutical or oil industries, especially Halliburton executives, who should be sent to Guantánamo. All the Democrats believe the way to strike fear in the hearts of the terrorists is for the federal government to invest heavily in windmills. All the Democrats oppose the war. And all the Democrats who took a position on the war before it began were for it, but now believe that everything Bush did from that moment forward has been bad! bad! bad! … Finally, all the candidates are willing to sell out any of these other issues in service of the one burning desire of all Democrats: abortion on demand. If they could just figure out a way to abort babies using solar power, that's all we'd ever hear about."

"Being nice to people is, in fact, one of the incidental tenets of Christianity (as opposed to other religions whose tenets are more along the lines of "kill everyone who doesn't smell bad and doesn't answer to the name Mohammed")."

"I think the other point that no one is making about the abuse photos is just the disproportionate number of women involved, including a girl general running the entire operation. I mean, this is lesson, you know, number 1,000,047 on why women shouldn't be in the military. In addition to not being able to carry even a medium-sized backpack, women are too vicious."

"USA Today doesn't like my "tone," humor, sarcasm, etc. etc., which raises the intriguing question of why they hired me to write for them in the first place. Perhaps they thought they were getting Catherine Coulter."

"Here at the Spawn of Satan convention in Boston, conservatives are deploying a series of covert signals to identify one another, much like gay men do. My allies are the ones wearing crosses or American flags. The people sporting shirts emblazened with the "F-word" are my opponents. Also, as always, the pretty girls and cops are on my side, most of them barely able to conceal their eye-rolling."

"When we were fighting communism, OK, they had mass murderers and gulags, but they were white men and they were sane. Now we're up against absolutely insane savages."

"[Learning difficulties are a cover for] rich parents with dumb kids...That's why 'Pinch' Sulzberger, the publisher of The New York Times, is alleged to have dyslexia — because he's retarded."

"What are the odds that Dan Rather would have accepted such patently phony documents from, say, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?"

"Vester: You say you'd rather not talk to liberals at all? Coulter: I think a baseball bat is the most effective way these days."

"If Gore had been elected president, right now he would just be finding that last lesbian quadriplegic for the Special Forces team."

"A couple alleged males attempted to sucker punch a 100-pound woman and missed. And they ended up with their faces smashed in and spending the night in the Pima County Jail, where I'm sure — being good liberals — their views on gay marriage will serve them well."

"When you're allowed to exist on the same continent of the United States of America, protecting you with a nuclear shield around you, you're polite and you support us when we've been attacked on our own soil. They violated that protocol. … They better hope the United States doesn't roll over one night and crush them. They are lucky we allow them to exist on the same continent."

"Since liberals never print retractions, they can say anything. What they said in the past is always deemed inadmissible and unfair to quote."

"We'll drive off the side of that bridge when we come to it, Senator Kennedy."

"The only standard journalists respect is: Will this story promote the left-wing agenda?"

"The Times was rushing to assure its readers that "prominent Islamic scholars and theologians in the West say unequivocally that nothing in Islam countenances the Sept. 11 actions." (That's if you set aside Muhammad's many specific instructions to kill nonbelievers whenever possible)."

"Like the Democrats, Playboy just wants to liberate women to behave like pigs, have sex without consequences, prance about naked, and abort children."

"I'm getting a little fed up with hearing about, oh, civilian casualties. I think we ought to nuke North Korea right now just to give the rest of the world a warning."

"Well, he was a very good rapist. I think that should not be forgotten."

"Press passes can't be that hard to come by if the White House allows that old Arab Helen Thomas to sit within yards of the president."

"Would that it were so! … That the American military were targeting journalists."

"Newsweek couldn't wait a moment to run a story that predictably ginned up Islamic savages into murderous riots in Afghanistan, leaving hundreds injured and 16 dead. Who could have seen that coming? These are people who stone rape victims to death because the family "honor" has been violated and who fly planes into American skyscrapers because — wait, why did they do that again? Come to think of it, I'm not sure it's entirely fair to hold Newsweek responsible for inciting violence among people who view ancient Buddhist statues as outrageous provocation — though I was really looking forward to finally agreeing with Islamic loonies about something. (Bumper sticker idea for liberals: News magazines don't kill people, Muslims do.)"

"Harriet Miers isn't qualified to play a Supreme Court justice on The West Wing, let alone to be a real one."

"We've been waiting 30 years to end the lunacy of nine demigods on the Supreme Court deciding every burning social issue of the day for us, loyal subjects in a judicial theocracy. We don't want someone who will decide those issues for us — but decide them "our" way. If we did, a White House bureaucrat with good horse sense might be just the ticket."

"We've gone from a representative democracy to a monarchy, and the most appalling thing is – even conservatives just hope like the dickens the next king is a good one."

"The Democrats complain about the Republican base being nuts … The nuts are their entire party … They're always accusing us of repressing their speech. I say let's do it. Let's repress them. … Frankly, I'm not a big fan of the First Amendment."

"The Democrats are giving aid and comfort to the enemy for no purpose other than giving aid and comfort to the enemy. There is no plausible explanation for the Democrats' behavior other than that they long to see U.S. troops shot, humiliated, and driven from the field of battle. They fill the airwaves with treason, but when called to vote on withdrawing troops, disavow their own public statements. These people are not only traitors, they are gutless traitors."

"I think the government should be spying on all Arabs, engaging in torture as a televised spectator sport, dropping daisy cutters wantonly throughout the Middle East and sending liberals to Guantanamo. But if we must engage in a national debate on half-measures: After 9-11, any president who was not spying on people calling phone numbers associated with terrorists should be impeached for being an inept commander in chief. With a huge gaping hole in lower Manhattan, I'm not sure why we have to keep reminding people, but we are at war. (Perhaps it's because of the media blackout on images of the 9-11 attack. We're not allowed to see those because seeing planes plowing into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon might make us feel angry and jingoistic.) Among the things that war entails are: killing people (sometimes innocent), destroying buildings (sometimes innocent) and spying on people (sometimes innocent). That is why war is a bad thing. But once a war starts, it is going to be finished one way or another, and I have a preference for it coming out one way rather than the other."

"While taking the "best of early Chinese and Cuban socialism" -- which one assumes would exclude the forced abortions, imprisonment for homosexuals and forced labor"

"In the history of the nation, there has never been a political party so ridiculous as today's Democrats. It's as if all the brain-damaged people in America got together and formed a voting bloc."

"We need somebody to put rat poisoning in Justice Stevens's creme brulee. That's just a joke, for you in the media."

"We didn't raise this issue, the courts raised it. The courts jammed it down our throats, at the risk of insulting any of my gay male fans."

"Three cartoons made political points. One showed Muhammad turning away suicide bombers from the gates of heaven, saying "Stop, stop — we ran out of virgins!" — which I believe was a commentary on Muslims' predilection for violence. Another was a cartoon of Muhammad with horns, which I believe was a commentary on Muslims' predilection for violence. The third showed Muhammad with a turban in the shape of a bomb, which I believe was an expression of post-industrial ennui in a secular — oops, no, wait: It was more of a commentary on Muslims' predilection for violence. In order to express their displeasure with the idea that Muslims are violent, thousands of Muslims around the world engaged in rioting, arson, mob savagery, flag-burning, murder and mayhem, among other peaceful acts of nonviolence. Muslims are the only people who make feminists seem laid-back."

"I think our motto should be, post-9-11, "raghead talks tough, raghead faces consequences.""

"You know, OK, I made a few jokes — and they killed 3000 Americans. Fair trade."

"The amazing part of the great Danish cartoon caper isn't that Muslims immediately engage in acts of mob violence when things don't go their way. That is de rigueur for the Religion of Peace. Their immediate response to all bad news is mass violence. That's a "dog bites man" story and belongs on page B-34, next to the grade school hot lunch menu and the birth notices. After an Egyptian ferry capsized recently, killing hundreds of passengers, a whole braying mob of passengers' relatives staged an organized attack on the company, throwing furniture out the window and burning the building to the ground. Witnesses say it was the most violent ocean liner-related incident since Carnival Cruise Lines fired Kathie Lee Gifford. The "offense to Islam" ruse is merely an excuse for Muslims to revert to their default mode: rioting and setting things on fire."

"Perhaps we could put aside our national, ongoing, post-9/11 Muslim butt-kissing contest and get on with the business at hand: Bombing Syria back to the stone age and then permanently disarming Iran."

"You don't want the Republicans in power, does that mean you want a dictatorship, gay boy?"

"Is the idea of gay cowboys really that new? Didn’t the Village People do that a couple of decades ago? Am I the only person who saw John Travolta in “Urban Cowboy”? Movies with the same groundbreaking theme to come: — “Westward Homo!” — “The Magnificent, Fabulous Seven” — “Gunfight at the K-Y Corral” — “How West Hollywood Was Won”"

"I'd build a wall. In fact, I'd hire illegal immigrants to build the wall. And throw out the illegals who are here. … It's cheap labor."

"But as for bath houses versus marriage, there‘s nothing that prevents gays in being in lifelong committed relationships. The point of—the reason I think so many Americans, I suppose, including myself, have reacted so badly to courts announcing, you know, discovering rights to gay marriage in the Massachusetts constitution is that there should be benefits."

"The tolerant liberal suddenly becomes very intolerant when their official religion is challenged."

"Liberals have managed to eliminate the idea of manly honor. Instead, all they have is womanly indignation."

"I really liked Deadheads and the whole Dead concert scene: the tailgating, the tie-dye uniforms, the camaraderie — it was like NASCAR for potheads."

"The greatest threat to the war on terrorism isn't the Islamic insurgency — our military can handle the savages. It's traitorous liberals trying to lose the war at home."

"I don't know if he's gay. But Al Gore — total fag."

"I decided that I might adopt that as my new position on gay marriage, that I'm not against gay marriage. I'm just against gay divorce. We should have a constitutional amendment prohibiting them from getting divorced. Because I think we need to protect the sanctity of divorce."

"As for catching Osama, it's irrelevant. Things are going swimmingly in Afghanistan."

"It was this idea (Be nice!) that fueled liberals' rage at Reagan when he vanquished the Soviet Union with his macho "cowboy diplomacy" that was going to get us all blown up. As the Times editorial page hysterically described Reagan's first year in office: "Mr. Reagan looked at the world through gun sights." Yes, he did! And now the Evil Empire is no more."

"Six imams removed from a US Airways flight from Minneapolis to Phoenix are calling on Muslims to boycott the airline. If only we could get Muslims to boycott all airlines, we could dispense with airport security altogether."

"Canada has become trouble recently … It’s always the worst Americans who go there … We could have taken them over so easy. But I only want the western part, with the ski areas, the cowboys, and the right wingers. They’re the only good parts of Canada."

"Democrats cannot conceive of "hate speech" towards Christians because, in their eyes, Christians always deserve it."

"Our book is Genesis. Their book is Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring, the original environmental hoax."

"We are simultaneously supposed to gasp in awe at teachers' raw dedication and be forced to listen to their incessant caterwauling about how they don't make enough money. Well, which is it? Are they dedicated to teaching tomorrow's future or are they in it for the money? After all the carping about how little teachers are paid, if someone enters the teaching profession for the big bucks, aren't they too stupid to be teaching our kids?"

"I'm here, I'm not queer, and I'm not going away."

"These self-obsessed women seemed genuinely unaware that 9/11 was an attack on our nation and acted as if the terrorist attacks happened only to them. The whole nation was wounded, all our lives reduced. But they believed the entire country was required to marinate in their exquisite personal agony. Apparently denouncing Bush was an important part of their closure process. These broads are millionaires, lionized on TV and in articles about them, reveling in their status as celebrities and stalked by grief-arazzis. I’ve never seen people enjoying their husbands’ deaths so much."

"Slander was about liberals’ methods, Treason was about the political consequences of liberalism, and Godless is about the underlying mental disease that creates liberalism."

"Being a Christian means that I am called upon to do battle against lies, injustice, cruelty, hypocrisy — you know, all the virtues in the church of liberalism."

"I would like evolution to join the roster of other discredited religions, like the Cargo Cult of the South Pacific. Practitioners of Cargo Cult believed that manufactured products were created by ancestral spirits, and if they imitated what they had seen the white man do, they could cause airplanes to appear out of the sky, bringing valuable cargo like radios and TVs. So they constructed “airport towers” out of bamboo and “headphones” out of coconuts and waited for the airplanes to come with the cargo. It may sound silly, but in defense of the Cargo Cult, they did not wait as long for evidence supporting their theory as the Darwinists have waited for evidence supporting theirs."

"Enjoy most: the prospect of having an impact on the public debate. Irritating liberals is a close second."

"Girl-power feminists who got where they are by marrying men with money or power — Hillary Rodham Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Arianna Huffington and John Kerry — love to complain about how hard it is for a woman to be taken seriously. It has nothing to do with their being women. It has to do with their cheap paths to power. Kevin Federline isn't taken seriously either."

"I was going to have a few comments on the other Democratic presidential candidate John Edwards, but it turns out you have to go into rehab if you use the word "faggot", so I — so kind of an impasse — can't really talk about Edwards."

"And of course, if you're working for a Republican candidate, you'll meet some nice heterosexual guys. By the way, before I let that slide, I do want to point out one thing that has been driving me crazy with the media, how they keep describing Mitt Romney's position as being “pro-gays, and that's going to upset right-wingers.” Well, you know, screw you, I'm not anti-gay. We're against gay marriage. I don't want gays to be discriminated against. I mean, I think we have, in addition to blacks, I don't know why all gays aren't Republicans. I think we have the pro-gay position, which is anti-crime and for tax cuts. Gays make a lot of money, and they're victims of crime. I mean, the way -- no, they are. They should be with us. But the media portrays us. If they could get away with it, they would start saying, you know, “Mitt Romney, he's pro-civil rights, and that's going to upset conservatives.” No. OK. Sorry, go ahead."

"The only place Al Gore conserves energy these days is on the treadmill. I don't want to suggest that Al's getting big, but the last time I saw him on TV I thought, "That reminds me — we have to do something about saving the polar bears." Never mind his carbon footprint — have you seen the size of Al Gore's regular footprint lately? It's almost as deep as Janet Reno's."

"These people can't even wrap up genocide. We've been hearing about this slaughter in Darfur forever — and they still haven't finished. The aggressors are moving like termites across that country. It's like genocide by committee. Who's running this holocaust in Darfur, FEMA? This is truly a war in which we have absolutely no interest. But liberals want our boys to go fight scimitar-wielding dervishes."

"One more item for the delusional Miss Grundys still obtusely citing Reagan as their model of "niceness": As governor of California, Reagan gave student protesters at Berkeley the finger. Remember that next time you ask yourself: "What would Reagan do?" People who are afraid of ideas whitewash Reagan like they whitewash Jesus. Sorry to break it to you, but the Reagan era did not consist of eight years of Reagan joking about his naps."

"If Imus had called me a "towheaded ho" or Al Sharpton a "nappy-headed ho," it would be what's known as "funny." (And if he called Anna Nicole Smith a "flaxen-headed ho," it would be "absolutely accurate.") But he attacked the looks and morals of utterly innocent women, who had done nothing to inject themselves into public debate. Imus should apologize to the Rutgers women — and those women alone — send them flowers, and stop kissing Al Sharpton's ring. This wasn't an insult to all mankind, and certainly not an insult to Al Sharpton. Now, if Imus had called the basketball players "fat, race-baiting black men with clownish hairstyles," well, then perhaps Sharpton would be owed an apology."

"From the attacks of 9/11 to Monday's school shooting, after every mass murder there is an overwhelming urge to "do something" to prevent a similar attack. But since Adam ate the apple and let evil into the world, deranged individuals have existed. Most of the time they can't be locked up until it's too late. It's not against the law to be crazy — in some jurisdictions it actually makes you more viable as a candidate for public office."

"Apparently, even crazy people prefer targets that can't shoot back. The reason schools are consistently popular targets for mass murderers is precisely because of all the idiotic "Gun-Free School Zone" laws. From the people who brought you "zero tolerance," I present the Gun-Free Zone! Yippee! Problem solved! Bam! Bam! Everybody down! Hey, how did that deranged loner get a gun into this Gun-Free Zone?"

"The not-visibly-insane Democrats all claim they'll get rough with the terrorists, but they can't even face Brit Hume. In case you missed this profile in Democrat machismo, the Democratic presidential candidates are refusing to participate in a debate hosted by Fox News Channel because the hosts are "biased." But they'll face down Mahmoud Ahmadinejad! At this, even Hillary Clinton was thinking, "Come on, guys — let's grow a pair.""

"The "European Union" happens to be composed of people who hate our guts. It is the continent where Moveon.org-style lunatics are the friendly, pro-American types and the rest are crazy Muslims."

"In fairness to Edwards, asking a trial lawyer to name his favorite moral leader is like asking the president of Iran to name his favorite Jew. (Answer: George Soros.) If you're keeping score, that's two major religions the Democrats lack a working knowledge of — Christianity and Islam."

"In 1960, whites were 90 percent of the country. The Census Bureau recently estimated that whites already account for less than two-thirds of the population and will be a minority by 2050. Other estimates put that day much sooner. One may assume the new majority will not be such compassionate overlords as the white majority has been. If this sort of drastic change were legally imposed on any group other than white Americans, it would be called genocide. Yet whites are called racists merely for mentioning the fact that current immigration law is intentionally designed to reduce their percentage in the population."

"Maybe we could fight the war a little harder and not keep responding to Amnesty International... I don't think we even need more troops. I think we need to be less worried about civilian casualties. I mean, are the terrorists—are Islamic terrorists a more frightening enemy than the Nazis war machine? I don't think so. Fanatics can be stopped. Japanese kamikaze bombers—you can stop them by bombing their society. We killed more people in two nights over Hamburg than we have in the entire course of the Iraq war. … You can destroy the fighting spirit of fanatics. We've done it before. We know how to do it. And it's not by fighting a clean little hygienic war. … That was not a clean, hygienic war, World War Two. We killed a lot of civilians, and we crushed the Nazi war machine. And the idea that Nazism, which was tied to a civilized culture, was less of a threat than the Koran, tied to a Stone Age culture, I think is preposterous! If we want to win this war, we absolutely could. And I think we've been too nice so far. … We have liberals in this country screaming bloody murder about how we treat terrorists captured who are at Guantanamo, whether Khalid Sheikh Mohammed is being water-boarded... If this is a country that is worried about that—and I don't think it is—then we may as well give up right now. … Democracies don't like to go to war, so we're going to have to wrap it up quickly and destroy the fighting spirit of the fanatics."

"So for those of you who haven't read any of my five best-selling books: Liberals are driven by Satan and lie constantly."

"Edwards is like a politician who keeps announcing that he will not use his opponent's criminal record for partisan political advantage. Manifestly, I was not making fun of their son's death; I was making fun of John Edwards' incredibly creepy habit of invoking his son's tragic death to advance his political career — a practice so repellant, it even made John Kerry queasy. I'm a little tired of losers trying to raise campaign cash or TV ratings off of my coattails, particularly when they use their afflictions or bereavement schedules to try to silence the opposition."

"For six years, the Bush administration has kept America safe from another terrorist attack, allowing the Democrats to claim that the war on terrorism is a fraud, a "bumper sticker," a sneaky ploy by a power-mad president to create an apocryphal enemy so he could spy on innocent librarians in Wisconsin. And that's the view of the moderate Democrats. The rest of them think Bush was behind the 9/11 attacks."

"In anticipation of their surrender strategy becoming substantially less popular in the wake of another terrorist attack, the Democrats are all claiming that the threat of terrorism was nonexistent — notwithstanding 9/11, the Cole bombing, the bombing of our embassies, the bombing of the World Trade Center, the Achille Lauro, etc. etc. — until George Bush invaded Iraq."

"B. Hussein Obama said he was for slavery reparations in many forms, but the only one that got applause was for more "investment" in schools. In Obama's defense, the precise question was: "But is African-Americans ever going to get reparations for slavery?" So a switch to the subject of education was only natural. Moreover, a question on reparations has got to be confusing when you're half-white and half-black. What do you do? Demand an apology for slavery and money from yourself? I guess biracial reparations would involve sending yourself money, then sending back a portion of that money to yourself, minus 50 percent in processing fees — which is the same way federal aid works."

"And why is it "homophobic" for Senate Republicans to look askance at sex in public bathrooms? Is the Times claiming that sodomy in public bathrooms is the essence of being gay? I thought gays just wanted to get married to one another and settle down in the suburbs so they could visit each other in the hospital."

"Now our forces are killing lots of al-Qaida jihadists, preventing another terrorist attack on U.S. soil, and giving democracy in Iraq a chance — and Democrats say we are "losing" this war. I think that's a direct quote from their leader in the Senate, Harry Reid, but it may have been the Osama bin Laden tape released this week. I always get those two confused. OK, they knew what Petraeus was going to say. But we knew what the Democrats were going to say. If liberals are not traitors, their only fallback argument at this point is that they're really stupid."

"Liberals are hopping mad because Rush Limbaugh referred to phony soldiers as "phony soldiers." They claim he was accusing all Democrats in the military of being "phony." True, all Democrats in the military are not phony soldiers, but all phony soldiers seem to be Democrats."

"If we took away women's right to vote, we'd never have to worry about another Democrat president. It's kind of a pipe dream, it's a personal fantasy of mine, but I don't think it's going to happen. And it is a good way of making the point that women are voting so stupidly, at least single women."

"We just want Jews to be perfected, as they say. … That's what Christianity is. We believe the Old Testament, but ours is more like Federal Express. You have to obey laws. ...That is what Christians consider themselves: perfected Jews. We believe the Old Testament. As you know from the Old Testament, God was constantly getting fed up with humans for not being able to live up to all the laws. What Christians believe — this is just a statement of what the New Testament is — is that that's why Christ came and died for our sins. Christians believe the Old Testament. You don't believe our testament."

"Ironically, for all of their love of conspiracy theories — the rigging of the 2000 election, vote suppression in Ohio in 2004, 9/11 being an inside job, oil companies covering up miracle technology that would allow cars to run on dirt, Britney Spears' career, etc., etc. — when presented with an actual conspiracy of Soviet spies infiltrating the U.S. government, they laughed it off like world-weary skeptics and dedicated themselves to slandering Joe McCarthy. Then as now, liberals protect themselves from detection with wild calumnies against anybody who opposes them. They have no interest in — or aptitude for — persuasion. Their goal is to anathematize their enemies."

"Uttering lines that send liberals into paroxysms of rage, otherwise known as "citing facts," is the spice of life."

"I'm a Christian first, and a mean-spirited, bigoted conservative second, and don't you ever forget it."

"The Democratic Party supports criminals and Islamic terrorists but has no sympathy for taxpayers."

"If you're looking at substance rather than whether it's an R or D after his name, manifestly, if he's our candidate, then Hillary's gonna be our girl, Sean, because she's more conservative than he is. I think she would be stronger on the war on terrorism. I absolutely believe that. … I will campaign for her if it's McCain."

"The man responsible for keeping Americans safe from another terrorist attack on American soil for nearly seven years now will go down in history as one of America's greatest presidents."

"Victim of a crime? Thank a single mother."

"I wouldn't kill an abortionist myself, but I wouldn't want to impose my moral values on others. No one is for shooting abortionists. But how will criminalizing men making difficult, often tragic, decisions be an effective means of achieving the goal of reducing the shootings of abortionists?"

"Coulter: Every presidential assassination or attempted presidential assassination was committed by some sort of left-wing loon, communist, anarchist, communitarians, yes they were or they had no politics at all. Behar: The homegrown terrorists are also another group we have to worry about here. Coulter: Okay but they're all liberals."

"Now that the provost has instructed me on the criminal speech laws he apparently believes I have a proclivity (to break), despite knowing nothing about my speech, I see that he is guilty of promoting hatred against an identifiable group: conservatives. The provost simply believes and is publicizing his belief that conservatives are more likely to commit hate crimes in their speeches. Not only does this promote hatred against conservatives, but it promotes violence against conservatives."

"Take a camel."

"The Democrats compare their new health care bill to entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid. But those are welfare, not health care. They may go to deserving welfare recipients, but they are a government-enforced gift from the young to the old (Medicare), and from the middle class to the poor (Medicaid). … These programs will have to be reconfigured at some point, but how society takes care of the old and the poor should be put in a separate box from how the non-elderly and non-poor should obtain health care. Democrats want to turn the entire citizenry into welfare recipients."

"The nonsense about President Obama being a Muslim has got to stop. I rise to defend him from this absurd accusation by pointing out that he is obviously an atheist."

"I’m pretty sure little François A-Houle does not need to travel with a bodyguard. I would like to know when this sort of violence, this sort of protest, has been inflicted upon a Muslim — who appear to be, from what I’ve read of the human rights complaints, the only protected group in Canada. I think I’ll give my speech tomorrow night in a burqa. That will protect me."

"It confirms my idea that you also need more liberal gun laws. Guns lead to a polite society, as we like to say in the United States. And I think that all of western Canada would agree with me."

"As we have learned from ObamaCare, young people are not considered adults until age 26, at which point they are finally forced to get off their parents' health care plans. The old motto was "Old enough to fight, old enough to vote." The new motto is: "Not old enough to buy your own health insurance, not old enough to vote.""

"Brain research in the last five years at Dartmouth and elsewhere has shown that human brains are not fully developed until age 25 and are particularly deficient in their frontal lobes, which control decision-making, rational thinking, judgment, the ability to plan ahead and to resist impulses. Unfortunately, we didn't know that in 1971. Those of you who have made it to age 26 without dying in a stupid drinking game — and I think congratulations are in order, by the way — understand how insane it is to allow young people to vote."

"True, Reagan tied with Carter for the youth vote in 1980 and stole younger voters from Mondale in 1984, but other than that, young voters have consistently embarrassed themselves. Of course, back when Reagan was running for president, young voters consisted of the one slice of the population completely uninfected by the Worst Generation. Today's youth are the infantilized, pampered, bicycle-helmeted children of the Worst Generation. They foisted this jug-eared, European socialist on us and now they must be punished. Voters aged 18 to 29 years old comprised nearly a fifth of the voting population in 2008 and they voted overwhelmingly for Obama, 66 percent to 31 percent."

"On the day of the Arizona massacre, Arizona Rep. Raul Grijalva blamed the "Palin express." The father of Gabrielle Giffords, one of the victims, blamed "the whole Tea Party." The sheriff of Pima County, Clarence Dupnik, who had failed to lock Loughner up despite repeated arrests and other contacts, blamed "the vitriolic rhetoric that we hear day in and day out from people in the radio business and some people in the TV business.""

"If we're looking for a rationale other than "Loughner was nuts," I think the more relevant facts about him are that he was an atheist who detested religion and religious people, made lots of references to satanic New Age "conscience dreaming" (sic) and was involved in the occult. When a fellow participant on a UFO website wrote a lengthy response to Loughner's question about "what is wrong or right with the current date?" which included the subordinate clause, "a day in Christ is as a thousand years," Loughner fixated on that one line, railing, "I won't listen to that fictitious crap without the author. This is laughable to notice a gospel or writing related to Christ.""

"The national Log Cabin Republicans are ridiculous. They’re not conservative at all. I don’t even think they’re gay — they’re bi (partisan). GOProud is comprised of real conservatives who happen to be gay. (Same with the Texas LCRs, for whom I’ve been signing books for years.)"

"A small item but the point is Nixon came in, shut it down, there was the shooting at Kent State, and gosh, I know liberals don't like it and when you look on Nexis and oh, the whole country was embarrassed. Well, I'm not embarrassed. That's what you do with a mob. They were monstrous at Kent State. It was being led by Bill Ayers."

"So I think all gays who are born gay are overwhelming conservative, maybe apolitical, and all those angry gays, causing trouble for everybody, I don't think they were born gay. I think they are just angry at their fathers."

"Eric Bolling: "Corporate personhood", "demolition of capitalism", "if we learn to share, we can all live in prosperity." What do you make of all this, Ann? Ann Coulter: All of those quotes could have been said in 1789 France before the French Revolution, or the Russian Revolution or — with only slight modification — when the Nazis were coming to power. Cuba under Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela - This is always the beginning of totalitarianism. Eric Bolling: Are you sure, Ann, though- are you sure they couldn't also be found behind one of Obama's economic cabinet meetings? Ann Coulter: Well, yes! Thus the point of my book, bringing together all of these mob uprisings with the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party looooves mob uprisings. It's their path to power. And, you know, they always assume the mob leaders will remain mob leaders, and not end up like Maximilien Robespierre, beheaded a couple years after the revolution began. That is often the way the revolutions go."

"Gays have got to be pro-life. As soon as they find the gay gene, guess who the liberal yuppies are going to start aborting."

"It’s strange that Santorum doesn’t seem to understand the crucial state-federal divide bequeathed to us by the framers of our Constitution, inasmuch as it is precisely that difference that underlies his own point that states could ban contraception if they wanted to. Of course they can. States could outlaw purple hats, pogo sticks or Gummi bears under our Constitution! We rarely see such silly state laws because the people don’t want them. But the Constitution written by James Madison, et al, does not prevent a state’s elected representatives from enacting them."

"The Constitution mostly places limits on what the federal government can do. Only in a few instances does it restrict what states can do. Even a state cannot, for example, infringe on the people’s right to bear arms or to engage in the free exercise of religion. A state can’t send a senator to the U.S. Congress if he is under 30 years old. But except for a few instances like these, the Constitution leaves states free to govern themselves as they see fit."

"In New York City, they can have live sex clubs and abortion on demand, but no salt or smoking sections in restaurants. Nothing in the Constitution protects your right to smoke. In Tennessee, they can ban abortion, but have salt, creches and 80 mph highways. At least that’s how it’s supposed to work."

"Gay marriage has been on the ballot in ,um, three dozen, more than three dozen states. Every state when the people are allowed to vote have rejected it, including this state (California), including Maine, including Oregon. I've spent far too long and that is because, someday you will understand this young man, that is because when you get older and when you have property and you have interests. I mean everyone asks "Oh people - things are changing and people." No young people are always stupid. I love you, but you don't - you don't understand what creates a civilization and I will recommend to all of you a book I'm reading now, Charles Murray's Coming Apart. It will knock your socks off and mildly depress you, but part of one of the chapters is, million books who say the same thing, the - the linchpin of civilization is mother and father, married to one other. Not cohabitating partners."

"So for now I'd like gays to just be part of conservatism, just like women are, just like blacks are, without a special designation."

"There is something to being gay apart from the sodomy."

"Gays are national conservatives."

"Mostly, in this country, it is homosexual behavior. By the way, I'm not the one who wants to do anything about it. I'm just saying, if the argument is "smoking well we all got to pay"; sodomy we all have to pay. Your the one making the argument, fine go again have your bathhouses. Have at it."

"No, she's anti-bathhouse. You have to crack down on sodomy."

"They have a problem with unmarried women who think, "No, we don't need national defense, we need our birth control paid for." And why? Because single women look at the government as their husbands. "Please provide for me, please take care of me.""

"I don’t care if she knew about this. She ought to be in prison for wearing a hijab."

"if you pass amnesty, that's it. It's over. Then we organize the death squads for the people who wrecked America."

"If you don't want to be killed by ISIS, don't go to Syria. If you don't want to be killed by a Mexican, there's nothing I can tell you."

"ISIS is not at our doorstep. Illegal immigrants are not only at our doorstep, but millions of them are already through the door, murdering far more Americans than ISIS ever will."

"This Bruce Jenner still has Y chromosomes in every cell of his body. Do not tell me he is a girl. And I’ve checked with all my gay friends and they all say if he didn’t cut it off, he’s still a man."

"If it's real, it is a mental illness and I don't think we should be celebrating and laughing about it."

"Well OK, if you want to call it emotional. I’m just saying how ever you want to categorize, it I don’t think its much different from the black woman in the psych ward. I don’t think it is different from an Anorexics who is already terribly thin looking in a mirror and thinking, ‘I feel fat.’ Yes they really feel that way, but they aren’t. Bruce Jenner is not a woman. Every cell in his body is the cell of a man."

"Christian America, religious America I should say — the same thing is true of Orthodox Jews and conservative Jews, although that is a very small percentage of the population — religious America is reproducing well above replacement rate, it’s liberals who are aborting and going gay and anyone with a flair for color, so I think we will have a leg-up in the demographic war, that’s what the left was facing, that they weren’t reproducing enough so they had to bring in the ringers from the Third World to vote for them."

"Don't want terrorism in US? Stop importing Muslims!"

"It can be difficult to discuss America’s immigration policies when it’s considered racist merely to say, ‘We liked America the way it was.""

"We turn away astrophysicists in order to make room for illiterate Afghan peasants who will drop out of high school to man coffee carts until deciding to engage in jihad against us."

"Only in the case of immigration is the public systematically lied to from every major news outlet. The media lie about everything, but immigration constitutes their finest hour of collective lying."

"We're always told that we need to amnesty illegals to shore up Social Security. How, exactly, are people who make so little money that they don't pay income taxes going to save Social Security?"

"The British Empire spread Anglo-Saxon culture around the globe–Protestant morals, individualism, the rule of law. Most British colonies rejected those values. Only the ones populated by actual British people–America, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand–managed to hold on to them and, as a result, prospered."

"America should be choosing immigrants the way the New England Patriots choose players. They don’t have a lottery system for their draft picks. No one guilts them into taking a blind kid with one leg over an All American–much less the blind kid’s cousin, to keep him company."

"The main difference between decapitations in Syria and Mexico is that Mexicans also behead women, children, and innocent bystanders. In addition to pioneering videotaped beheadings, Mexicans specialize in corpse desecration, burning people alive, rolling human heads onto packed nightclub dance floors, dissolving bodies in acid, and hanging mutilated bodies from bridges. Why are the media obsessed with ISIS’s beheadings but not the more frequent head-chopping right next door?"

"Israel says, quite correctly, that changing Israel’s ethnicity would change the idea of Israel. Well, changing America’s ethnicity changes the idea of America, too. Show me in a straight line why we can’t do what Israel does. Is Israel special? For some of us, America is special, too."

"By unapologetically opposing the transformation of America into a Third World country, the GOP would sweep the white vote–once white people recovered from the shock of any candidate asking for their vote. Why should Republicans be ashamed of getting white votes? How about the party work on getting more of them?"

"Democrats denounce and abuse white people, and Republicans act embarrassed about having whites vote for them."

"The billion-dollar immigration industry has turned every single aspect of immigration law into an engine of fraud. The family reunifications are frauds, the ‘farmworkers’ are frauds, the high-tech visas are frauds–and the asylum and refugee cases are monumental frauds."

"It's not that transgender people are going to go and molest children. It's that once you say men can go into women's bathrooms — men who are out shopping with their little daughters and don't have mommy to bring her in there. It's not that the trans are going to molest them, it's that a child molester now has the right to go into that bathroom."

"Khizr Khan, the Muslim "Gold Star Father" who harangued Americans at the Democratic National Convention, with a mute, hijab-wearing wife at his side, is just another in a long string of human shields liberals send out to defend their heinous policies. ... Does anyone know what Khan thinks of gays? How about miniskirts? Alcohol? Because I gather we're going to have to turn all our policies over to him, too. What have you sacrificed, Barney Frank??"

"Trump (Donald) denied knowing that Serge (Kovaleski) was disabled, and demanded an apology, saying that anyone could see his imitation was of a flustered, frightened reporter, not a disabled person. It’s true that Trump was not mimicking any mannerisms that Serge has. He doesn’t jerk around or flail his arms. He’s not retarded. He sits calmly, but if you look at his wrists, you’ll see they are curved in. That’s not the imitation Trump was doing—he was doing a standard retard, waving his arms and sounding stupid: “’Ahhh, I don’t know what I said—ahhh, I don’t remember!’ He’s going, ‘Ahhh, I don’t remember, maybe that’s what I said!’”"

"There's nothing Trump can do that won't be forgiven, except change his immigration policies."

"Everything that seems like a disability with Trump always turns out to be an advantage. If we were in the laboratory, designing the perfect presidential candidate, it’s unlikely we would have produced a tasteless, publicity‐seeking, coarse, billionaire, reality TV star. Ha! Look at how wrong we were. It turns out, that is exactly what we needed."

"The Trump candidacy puts Democrats in an extremely awkward position. They are the party of elegance and fabulosity, but also claim to be the party of the “blacks and browns”—who see absolutely nothing wrong with Trump’s taste. Jay Z and Beyoncé may not like Trump’s positions, but, boy, they like his style. They’re asking themselves, How can a person of such taste be a Republican? He’s P. Diddy in the Hamptons, disturbing the neighbors with his parties."

"The commentariat denounced Trump’s immigration policies, then quickly returned to saying he had no policies at all. It was as if JFK had said we were going to the moon and the entire media shouted back, “Okay, but what’s your policy on going to the moon.”"

"If you want a conservative country, you need a conservative populace. Immigration is changing the country, and there will be no changing it back. If you don’t understand that, you are the enemy of any conservative undertaking."

"Trump won because he was forcing the media and politicians to talk about real problems facing the country, not recycling the same bromides the GOP has been pushing for the past thirty years. Those may be okay ideas for another time, but not when the country is about to be permanently transformed into a new country, know as "California" where all those zippy Republican ideas have less chance of becoming law than the wish list of the Wicca online community."

"All those angry, uneducated Trump supporters seemed to understand what his policies were. They figured it out by listening to him. It was only fair. No one listened to Trump, except the voters; and no one listened to the voters, except Trump."

"Well, Milo learned HIS lesson. Pederasty acceptable only for refugees and illegals. Then libs will support you."

"On the bright side, maybe sending men in dresses into women's bathrooms will reduce number of women in our fighting forces."

"I was kinda torn on-on that. (Donald Trump's announcement he was banning transgender individuals from the US military) I know Congress was looking at it. So maybe he signed a bill they passed or something, but the upside is that the army was refusing to prohibit, you know, big hairy men from going into the ladies' locker room in the Marines, in the army. And I thought, "Well, you know, maybe finally this will cut down on girls in the marines.""

"In order to get the funding through for the wall, it was being held up by conservatives – or I would have thought, you know, sane humans – in the Senate who don’t want taxpayers like you and me paying for these lengthy transgender operations, years of therapy."

"I mean, for Pete’s sake, you can’t get into the military, or used to not be able to get into the military, who knows now, if you had asthma, psoriasis, attention deficit disorder, but we’re going to bring in people with an extremely peculiar and rare mental illness...and have the taxpayers pay for it."

"The only thing I'll say in defense of basically the entire conservative media is that, except for a few talk radio hosts, my twitter feed, I guess Brietbart, and Daily Caller is everyone seems to dislike Richard Spencer. He is you know our equivalent of Black Lives Matter. Apparently you know a gay showboater who just wants lots of media attention."

"I don't believe Hurricane Harvey is God's punishment for Houston electing a lesbian mayor. But that is more credible than "climate change.""

"This is the second chance to be a fellow that Chelsea Manning has blown"

"We’re about to see a genocide and if Trump doesn’t keep his promises on immigration, in about two generations that’s going to be the United States of America, so get used to it. But we are seeing a genocide there, and if we’re going to take any refugees it seems to me it ought to be particularly these white farmers who are being chosen and killed in really horrible ways,” she declared. “They’re not just going in and shooting them point blank, they’re really disgusting. They’re boiling people to death, just really sick tortures. They’re outnumbered, there aren’t that many of them, they’re going to be wiped out."

"Oh, and just one more point that a lot of Americans don’t know. We’re so used to, ‘Oh colonialism,’ no, the Boers, the ones who are there, were there before the Zulus, they got there first. The Zulus came down like a hundred years later. I mean we are witnessing a straight out genocide."

"Watching and wondering: Why does think aren't good enough to host a show on his network? MSNBC has done such a wonderful job spreading intersectionality to the rest of the world! Why no transgenders on their own network? [...] Which reminds me: Why does MSNBC put all its black hosts on the low-rated weekend ghetto? This must change!"

"Is there a political party for people who think Jan. 6 was dumb, notice that we don't have a wall, and can read an election report, but still say Bush is a male bimbo and pretty much everything liberals said about him was true?"

""Trumpism Without Trump" is the winning formula. We're keeping the policies, but getting rid of the 8-year-old."

"We know he had a lisp, wore eye liner, was aggressive toward girls, worked at Wendy's, played X-box, was a loner, was born in North Dakota, moved to TX and lived with grandmother. Why don't we know one thing about his parents?"

"[After Charlie Kirk had suggested all other Republican candidates should stand down in favor of Donald Trump] That’s nothing! I’m calling on EVERY REPUBLICAN TO COMMIT SUICIDE in solidarity with Trump!"

"We didn’t kill enough Indians."

"The media are in a dither, demanding to know who’s going to “run” Venezuela. The president should tell them, “Whomever the CIA chooses.”"

"She's a fascist Barbie doll!"

"Coulter writes that conservative books sell like hot cakes, conservative talk show hosts dominate the airwaves, and the public shows every indication of leaning to the right and has some hostility to liberals and their positions. This being true, why does almost half the electorate vote for the National Socialist Democrat party (NSDP), which is owned lock, stock and barrel by the Marxist left?"

"Meet Ann Coulter. In her opinion, "liberals are racists", the French are "a bunch of faggots", only property owners should be allowed to vote, and anyone who disagrees with her is a "fatuous idiot" or "evil". In liberal Europe, such propositions are seldom aired, even in the most right-wing salons. In America, however, Coulter — blonde, fortysomething — is a regular guest commentator on news and talk shows such as Good Morning America, Hannity and Colmes, At Large with Geraldo Rivera and The O'Reilly Factor."

"Why can't she say extremist Muslims rather than just Muslims? "If that'll make you happy. They slaughtered 3,000 people and I'm making unfair generalisations. I think we're even." Well, no, I don't think we're even, I begin to reply — and at this point I see a side of Ann Coulter that goes beyond the ludicrous opinions. I see someone who is not afraid to twist, distort, bully and lie in order to "win" her argument. Before I can elaborate or finish my sentence, she's off again. "Oh no, you're right, a generalisation is so much worse than slaughtering 3,000 people." I'm not saying that, I say. "I can't go beyond that, an ethnic generalisation is worse than slaughter. That is the essence of liberalism, you really do believe that. You get a glass of wine in you and you spit it out. You heard it. Making an un-PC generalisation is worse than the attack of 9/11." I'm not saying that, I repeat. "Yes, you are, you just said it." Of course I don't think that, I start, before I'm cut off again. "Liar!" The irony is that she claims to be above this kind of steamrolling. "The country is trapped in a political discourse that resembles professional wrestling," she has written. "Liberals are calling names while conservatives are trying to make arguments." But her view of what constitutes an argument seems to be a distinctly one-sided affair. I try again: "Do you think I have any point at all about..." I begin, but she interrupts again. "No!" She doesn't even know what my point was."

"Is Ann Coulter a nutcase? If she is, she's one listened to and approved of by a frightening number of Americans. Surely, I say, hoping she will concede that she sometimes provokes to amuse, she doesn't believe everything she comes out with. "This is the shocking thing for your readers," she replies. "I believe everything I say.""

"I know a lot of the widows and family members who lost loved ones on 9/11. They never wanted to be a member of a group that is defined by the tragedy of what happened. I find it unimaginable that anyone in the public eye could launch a vicious, mean-spirited attack on people whom I’ve known over the last four and a half years to be concerned deeply about the safety and security of our country. Perhaps her book should have been called Heartless."

"I think Ann Coulter is getting exactly what she wants, which is attention. … I think Ann Coulter often has intriguing and provocative things to say about the clash between liberalism and conservatism. I think some of the stuff she said here is over the line, and I have a pretty high tolerance for this kind of stuff because I believe that the more we argue, the better we are as a country, but I think some of the personal comments were just over the line."

"It's the ugliness of the charge that she is making, the ugliness of the words that she's using that are drawing attention to her… But it's almost as if she's a figure in a circus. And you're saying, "Oh, my God. Can you believe that?"

"Ann Coulter has become a legend in her own mind."

"I guess I committed the sin of accurately quoting Ann's comments, which got her dumped by National Review, which is not exactly part of the liberal media conspiracy… But I still think Ann can be very funny."

"Certain individuals continue to perpetuate negative stereotypes about Republicans. Especially Republican women. Who do I feel is the biggest culprit? Ann Coulter. I straight up don’t understand this woman or her popularity. I find her offensive, radical, insulting, and confusing all at the same time. But no matter how much you or I disagree with her, the cult that follows Coulter cannot be denied. She is a New York Times best-selling author and one of the most notable female members of the Republican Party. She was one of the headliners at the recent CPAC conference (but when your competition is a teenager who has a dream about the Republican Party and Stephen Baldwin, it’s not really saying that much). Coulter could be the poster woman for the most extreme side of the Republican Party. And in some ways I could be the poster woman for the opposite. I consider myself a progressive Republican, but here is what I don’t get about Coulter: Is she for real or not? Are some of her statements just gimmicks to gain publicity for her books or does she actually believe the things she says? Does she really believe all Jewish people should be “perfected” and become Christians? And what was she thinking when she said Hillary Clinton was more conservative than my father during the last election? If you truly have the GOP’s best interests at heart, how can you possibly justify telling an audience of millions that a Democrat would be a better leader than the Republican presidential candidate? (I asked Ann for comment on this column, including many of the above questions, but she did not answer my request.)"

"If Ann Coulter is trying to persuade people to her view, the personal attack is foolish …. I think this kind of stuff does conservatives more harm than good, because it basically reinforces what the left is trying to sell, that the right is mean, out of control, and whatever other adjectives you want to put in there."

"We—"the free love generation"—are now telling our children to abstain from sex? When I spoke at Carleton College, I told the young people: "Unless they were a virgin on their wedding day, anyone who preaches abstinence to you is a hypocrite." Two weeks later, Ann Coulter showed up at the same school, and one of the students raised his hand and asked her whether she'd been a virgin! It made the papers—and made me laugh. You know what Coulter did? Attacked the kid and changed the subject."

"Well, less said about whom, the better."

"Phillips organized a night out, and Coulter told his gay friends she knew they really didn't want to get married--she knew they were more interested in promiscuous sex than in traditional family structures. In a view very similar to radical queers' opposition to gay marriage, Coulter argued that gay marriage would ruin gay culture, because gays value promiscuity over monogamy."

"Goodness had nothing to do with it, dearie."

"Why don't you come up sometime and see me? … Come on up, I'll tell your fortune."

"Oh, Beulah, Peel me a grape."

"I only like two kinds of men, domestic and foreign."

"When I'm good, I'm very good. But when I'm bad, I'm better."

"It's not the men in your life that count, it's the life in your men."

"When women go wrong, men go right after them."

"A man in the house is worth two in the street."

"When I'm caught between two evils, I generally like to take the one I never tried."

"You ought to get out of those wet clothes and into a dry martini."

"You take one thing and add it to another and you get two. Two and two is four; and five'll get you ten if you know how to work it!"

"I used to be Snow White, but I drifted."

"I'm the kinda girl who works for Paramount by day, and Fox all night"

"To her British lover about to climb in bed with 80-something Mae: She said that she hoped soon to be able to say what Paul Revere said — 'The British are coming'. This was the last one-liner Mae ever uttered on film."

"Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just happy to see me?"

"When you got the personality, you don't need the nudity."

"Marriage is a fine institution, but I'm not ready for an institution."

"Give a man a free hand and he'll run it all over you."

"I've been in more laps than a napkin."

"She's the kind of girl who climbed the ladder of success wrong by wrong."

"I've always had a weakness for foreign affairs."

"You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough."

"Americans just don't know what being a movie star's all about."

"Jesus died For somebody's sins But not mine."

"Look around you, all around you Riding on a copper wave Do you like the world around you? Are you ready to behave?"

"He spared the child and spoiled the rod I have not sold myself to God!"

"People have the power To redeem the work of fools Upon the meek the graces shower It's decreed the people rule."

"Life is filled with holes Johnny's laying there in his sperm coffin The angel looks down at him and says "Oh, pretty boy Can't you show me nothing but surrender?"

"The vital importance of Patti Smith in the history of rock and roll music cannot be overstated. An icon of the New York art scene, Smith was instrumental in the development of punk and alternative rock. From the floors of Max’s Kansas City and the CBGB club, Smith orchestrated a musical revolution that still maintains its relevance to this day, five decades later. Despite her undisputed position as the queen of punk rock, Smith’s cultural diet is incredibly broad, incorporating everything from Motown to noise rock."

"Patti Smith, the rock n roll legend...as Patti Smith sings famously, "People have the power.""

"Her writing is so brilliant and beautiful."

"She is a soldier. She will not be defeated."

"If you can’t be kind, at least be vague.”"

"Civilized life begins with a boiled egg sitting upright in an egg cup."

"Dear Miss Manners: What about Easter? I suppose you have etiquette rules that apply to Easter Day? Gentle Reader: Certainly, and when the Day of Judgment comes, Miss Manners will have etiquette rules to apply to that, as well."

"Dear Miss Manners: What should I say when I am introduced to a homosexual "couple?" Gentle Reader: "How do you do?" "How do you do?""

"Dear Miss Manners: What is the proper way to eat potato chips? Gentle Reader: With a knife and fork. A fruit knife and an oyster fork, to be specific. Good heavens, what is the world coming to? Miss Manners does not mind explaining the finer points of gracious living, but she feels that anyone without the sense to pick up a potato chip and stuff it in their face should probably not be running around loose on the streets."

"Miss Manners doubts that there is anything in the world like an elegantly dressed Bostonian lurching across the room and diving face first into a bowl of guacamole dip while simultaneously disengaging her bodice from her bosom. Therefore, Miss Manners has a wee bit of trouble preparing a general rule for dealing with this eventuality."

"If you put together all the ingredients that naturally attract children - sex, violence, revenge, spectacle and vigorous noise - what you have is grand opera."

"In a fit of exasperation, Miss Manners once demanded of a six-year-old person how it could be so childish and was forced to admit the justice of its reply, “I'm a child.""

"Traditionally, a luncheon is a lunch that takes an eon."

"Machines do not have feelings... This is not to say that no inanimate objects have feelings -- toys are loaded with feelings, for instance, and only a monster would break the heart of a rag doll."

"As far as I can see, I really was put out of Germany for the crime of blasphemy. [...] My offense was to think that Hitler is just an ordinary man, after all. This is a crime against the reigning cult in Germany, which says that Mr. Hitler is a Messiah sent by God to save the German people — an old Jewish idea. To question this mystic mission is so heinous that, if you are German you can be sent to jail. I, fortunately, am an American, so I merely was sent to Paris. Worse things can happen to one."

"No people ever recognize their dictator in advance. He never stands for election on the platform of dictatorship. He always represents himself as the instrument for expressing the Incorporated National Will. When Americans think of dictators they always think of some foreign model. [...] But when our dictator turns up you can depend on it that he will be one of the boys, and he will stand for everything traditionally American. Since the great American tradition is Freedom and Democracy, you can bet that our dictator, God help us! will be a great democrat, through whose leadership alone democracy can be realized. And nobody will ever say "Heil" to him or "Ave Caesar", nor will they call him "Fuehrer" or "Duce." But they will greet him with one great big, universal, democratic, sheeplike bleat of 'O.K., Chief! Fix it like you wanna, Chief! Oh Kaaaay!'"

"I am not an expert on constitutional law, and my only justification for taking your time is that I have been for some years, as a foreign correspondent, an observer at the collapse of constitutional democracies. You might say I have been a researcher into the mortality of republics. The outstanding fact of our times is the decline and fall of constitutional democracy. A great need of our time is for more accurate analysis of the pathology of constitutional government, of why constitutional government perishes."

"It is true that the techniques of war are constantly "improved" as the genius of an age of invention is put in the service of the war machine. But that is not what is most disturbing. What is revolutionary is that the minds of men, women and children are being deliberately trained, directed, distorted, by every conceivable instrument of education and propaganda, to make them tolerant of war, receptive of war, prepared for war, lovers of war. The greatest menace in the world is not poison gas. There are gas masks against that. The menace is poisoned words, poisoned ideas."

"I know now that there are things for which I am prepared to die. I am willing to die for political freedom; for the right to give my loyalty to ideals above a nation and above a class; for the right to teach my child what I think to be the truth; for the right to explore such knowledge as my brains can penetrate; for the right to love where my mind and heart admire, without reference to some dictator's code to tell me what the national canons on the matter are; for the right to work with others of like mind; for a society that seems to me becoming to the dignity of the human race. I shall pick no fight, nor seek to impose by force these standards on others. But let it be clear. If the fight comes unsolicited, I am not willing to die meekly, to surrender without effort. And that being so, am I still a pacifist?"

"Having first robbed the Jews, the Nazis are beginning to rob the Church, and later will almost certainly expropriate what is left of the bourgeoisie property."

"It does not matter how 'courageous' a writer may be. Courage becomes useless, for a courageous writer who is not published is not a writer at all."

"Age is not measured by years. Nature does not equally distribute energy. Some people are born old and tired while others are going strong at seventy."

"The most destructive element in the human mind is fear. Fear creates aggressiveness; aggressiveness engenders hostility; hostility engenders fear — a disastrous circle."

"It is not the fact of liberty but the way in which liberty is exercised that ultimately determines whether liberty itself survives. When liberty is taken away by force it can be restored by force. When it is relinquished voluntarily by default it can never be recovered."

"They have not wanted Peace at all; they have wanted to be spared war — as though the absence of war was the same as peace."

"What was once Sinclair Lewis is buried in no ground. Even in life he was fully alive only in his writing. He lives in public libraries from Maine to California, in worn copies in the bookshelves of women from small towns who, in their girlhood, imagined themselves as Carol Kennicotts, and of medical men who, as youths, were inspired by Martin Arrowsmith."

"To have felt too much is to end in feeling nothing."

"Private shops [in Soviet Russia]. . . are taxed higher than co-operatives, are granted less favorable concessions, and enjoy a grudging legality. Nevertheless, their owners often make a great deal of money. The only explanation for it is the shortage of goods and the hunger for them. When one asks for the explanation of such a phenomenon in an agricultural country one is told: The government is exporting grain, the milk or egg price is too low and the peasants are holding back."

"In these ten years urban Russia having destroyed, exiled, or reduced to the most abject misery all representatives of that previous civilization, is without most bourgeoisie amenities."

"The hotels are entirely run by the Moscow Soviet, which seems to have picked its employees rather for their political reliability than for their experience or cleverness at hotel management."

"Every play which is produced—and for that matter, every book that is published, every picture which is exhibited, every film which is turned—is subjected to the Board of Censors… Romantic love in even its purest phases is not thought to be a fitting subject for consideration of citizens of a communist state;. . . the sex play is unknown in modern Russia… There remains as the ubiquitous theme for plays: revolution, with all the patriotic and nationalistic connotations which have grown up around it; heroism, sacrifice for the nation and class; consciousness of solidarity with one's fellow proletarians; common suffering; great adventures with new ideas; great prospects for future machine age which is to be a sort of Russian-communist Americanism."

"Indeed, gaiety is singularly lacking everywhere in Russia. What is intense and joyful goes into pioneer work and not into amusement. Only in the company of young communists and artists can one find stimulation."

"The people were to 'awaken' and Hitler's movement was going to vote dictatorship in! In itself a fascinating idea. Imagine a would-be dictator setting out to persuade a sovereign people to vote away their rights."

"He was lofty and remote from all foreigners. Germany for the Germans. Scorn for Americans, the dollar-chasers, the money-grubbers, the profiteers."

"When finally I walked into Adolf Hitler's salon in the Kaiserhof Hotel, I was convinced that I was meeting the future dictator of Germany. In something less than fifty seconds I was quite sure that I was not. It took just that time to measure the startling insignificance of this man who has set the whole world agog."

"He is formless, almost faceless, a man whose countenance is a caricature, a man whose framework seems cartilaginous, without bones. He is inconsequent and voluble, ill poised and insecure. He is the very prototype of the Little Man. A lock of lank hair falls over an insignificant and slightly retreating forehead. The back head is shallow. The face is broad in the check-bones. The nose is large, but badly shaped and without character. His movements are awkward. There is in his face no trace of any inner conflict or self-discipline. And yet, he is not without a certain charm. But it is the soft almost feminine charm of the Austrian! When he talks it is with a broad Austrian dialect. The eyes alone are notable. Dark gray and hyperthyroidic, they have the peculiar shine which often distinguishes geniuses, alcoholics, and hysterics."

"The interview was difficult, because one cannot carry on a conversation with Adolph Hitler. He speaks always, as though he were addressing a mass meeting. In personal intercourse he is shy, almost embarrassed. In every question he seeks for a theme that will set him off. Then his eyes focus in some far corner of the room; a hysterical note creeps into his voice which rises sometimes almost to a scream. He gives the impression of a man in a trance. He bangs the table."

"Millions of Germans follow Hitler because he has proclaimed war upon the banks, upon the trusts, upon 'loan-capital.' He has asserted time and time again that he will abolish the rule of one class by another."

"Hitler intends he told me to house as many of the unemployed as possible in barracks… and employ them in the service of the state at soldier's wages, of something like six cents a day with room and keep. This will serve two ends: re-begin general military training and raise a force of road-builders, etc. He intends to break up such great estates as are not now being cultivated by their owners and carry on an extensive colonization plan. This, however, is already being done by the present government."

"On the subject of the constitution Hitler was more explicit, though there again, I had to interrupt an address to an unseen gallery. 'I will get into power legally. I will abolish this parliament and the Weimar constitution afterward. I will found an authority-state, from the lowest cell to the highest instance; everywhere there will be responsibility and authority above, discipline and obedience below.' So that's that for the Republic."

"Anti-semitism became equal to anti-Republicanism. And Hitler went to the peasants with a campaign of anti-capitalism."

"The capitalism which Hitler fought was so-called 'loan capitalism.'—Finance, and the great trusts and cartels depending upon the banks. Department stores were included because, as it happened, many of them had Jewish owners. Expropriate Department Store Owners! Nationalize the trusts and the banks! Break up the Great Estates!'"

"Above all, he appeals to the invisible realities, to the emotions, to faith rather than reason. His speeches are full of talk about Honor, Folk, Fatherland, Loyalty, Family, Sacrifice, Revenge. 'He begins,' says a writer who has often heard him, 'in a gentle tenor voice. It is usually fifteen minutes before the miracle happens. Then it comes. Literally, it seems. 'the spirit enters into him.' He is possessed. Phrases come to his lips with are artistically perfect."

"Patriotism is the cheapest form of self-exaltation. If one is in debt, if one has not made a success of life—still, says Hitler, one belongs to the RACE. 'All that is not Race, is dross!' is one of his exclamations. The Germanys are a superior race and it is ordained that this superior race shall conquer the earth."

"Once in power, will he want to risk another French invasion? What, becomes, then, of his sonorous calls to arms? He will have to maintain law and order. What becomes then, of his promises to a revolutionary working class?"

"Fascism, Nazism, and Communism are all Collectivism. In this respect they are all alike."

"The communist theory is that a world war is inevitable; that in that war, if they play their cards well, the democracies will be lined up against the fascist dictatorships, and that the result of the war will be the triumph of Communism all over the world. Their chief program now is to get the democracies so lined up."

"The production of wealth by private enterprise is called Capitalism. It is hard to call Capitalism one of the isms, because Capitalism is not a creed at all. Capitalism was not 'invented' by any sociologist or philosopher. Capitalists never called themselves that. The word was invented by socialists to describe what they hated."

"Capitalism is the use of wealth in private hands to create more wealth. It is the existing world-wide modern system of organizing production and trade by private enterprise, free to seek profit by employing human labor. Its defenders argue that never, since the beginning of history, has there been such a thing as perfect equality and harmony;… and every know period of history had rich and poor, and that actually modern technology, plus liberal democracy, plus an increased social sense, plus Capitalism, have created the modern world, and that as far as the standard of living of the average man is concerned the modern world surpasses all previous epochs of history."

"[P]rivate enterprise and initiative, willing to take risks in the hope of gain, allowed to function in freedom, have produced the greatest wealth ever known in the history of mankind. And that if you stop this process and turn everything over to government, the activity will slow down, inventiveness will cease, and we shall get not equalization of riches, but equalization of poverty."

"It became the fashion a few years ago to say that civil liberties meant nothing to the average man; that his freedom was just freedom to starve. But it also happens that the 'free' countries are those which the underprivileged are best fed."

"A great many people say that there is a great battle going on in the world: between Fascism and Communism. Fascism is represented as Capitalism in its ultimate and final form, when it controls the state wholly. Communism is represented as the final expression of democracy. But this theory was invented by fascists and communists. To a democrat, looking on, it seems like a sham battle."

"We see Russia developing into a strongly centralized, highly nationalistic, intensely militarized state, subjecting policy and public welfare to national and military aims; and we see Benito Mussolini nationalizing more and more enterprises, restricting private initiative more and more, while the economic dictator of Germany becomes, not the capitalist representative, Dr. Schacht, but General Goering, who is a soldier and aviator and who believes that the chief business of Capitalism is to produce more cannons."

"Democracy for most of us is not an ism. It is a way of life. It does not represent any rigid form of state or national organization. It is something constantly developing and unfolding, changing from day to day, making mistakes, advancing in this direction and retreating in that, but always animated by a few fundamental ideas: that men have a right to live their own lives, provided they don't tread too heavily on other people's toes;…"

"All my life I have been a pacifist. All my life I have hated war and loved peace. I have contributed to peace societies, written for peace, spoken for peace, paraded for peace. But today I seriously question whether our ways of seeking peace are not playing directly into the hands of those who love war and intend to pursue it."

"I see the nations of the world arming in ways that have never before been known in the modern world. I am not speaking of new forms of poison gas, heavier or swifter bombing planes, or parachutes to land brigades of soldiers… What is revolutionary is that the minds of men, women and children are being deliberately trained, directed, distorted, by every conceivable instrument of education and propaganda, to make them tolerant of war, receptive of war, prepared for war, lovers of war. The greatest menace in the world today is not poison gas. There are gas masks against that. The menace is poisoned words, poisoned ideas."

"I have seen a German youth camp, housing six thousand children around the age of ten, display in tree-high letters the words: 'You were born to die for Germany!' I have seen babies of six and seven, black-shirted and belted, march in Italy in military drill. I have seen children in Russia kindergartens taught how to adjust gas masks and the strategy of trench warfare."

"Today in Germany the winner of the last Nobel peace prize is considered a traitor, and to attend any peace meeting would make one a candidate for a concentration camp. Today in Italy there is only one morality: the power and glory of Italy. Today in Russia all children are brought up to despise and hate 'the class enemy.'"

"The attempts of some of our school authorities to prevent students from learning anything about Communism, for instance, are futile. Newspapers exist; correspondents report; people travel. It is quite impossible to act as though Russia did not exist, or were as inaccessible and mysterious as Mars."

"The New Deal has enormously increased the sense of awareness; it has contributed radically to the breakdown of confidence in the forms and procedures of yesterday. But it has offered us no comprehensible picture of a future in which we can believe. We cannot believe that this vague eleemosynary humanitarianism, coupled with ruthless aggrandizement by politicians, is a picture of a new heaven and a new earth."

"Our children, it seems to me, learn the history of events, but are woefully unversed in the history of thought. [...] The result of this kind of teaching is to diminish all respect for intellect, reason and experience."

"The architects of the Constitution had the intention of making a republican and federal government which would endure with stability, insure justice, promote the general welfare and be proof against usurpation, either by the few and the rich or by the poor and the many. For the founding of a republic they had guides. For a federal system they had none. But they thoroughly believed that help could be found in the successes and failures of the past. They knew all about the 'class struggle'—so, for that matter, did the Greek philosophers, although you would think from our young socialist friends that Karl Marx was the first person ever to notice it. They knew all about Fascism and its causes, although they called it by another name."

"The word 'Liberal' has now become so variously interpreted that few people know what it means. Those who use it most precisely today are the Fascists and the Communists. They know what Liberalism is, and they are against it. For these people are collectivists."

"The Communists and Fascists are engaged in a sham struggle of ideas. The actual forms of government under which Fascists and Communists live are almost identical. One claims to abolish private property and attacks the other as its defender. But the property of Russia is not controlled by the people, but by the bureaucracy, operating in the name of the people, just as it is in Germany, where you get your head cut off if you try to hold your property in gold or in anything except German paper."

"What confuses the mind of the average American is that the American collectivist calls himself a Liberal, and has pre-empted a word which has a totally different philosophy behind it. The Fascists and Communists know that Liberalism is the enemy. But the American collectivist, who calls himself a Liberal, believes that he can have the better of two worlds."

"To be a liberal means to believe in human freedom. It means to believe in human beings. It means to champion that form of social and political order which releases the greatest amount of human energy; permits greatest liberty for individuals and groups, in planning and living their lives; cherishes freedom of speech, freedom of conscience and freedom of action, limited by only one thing: the protection of the freedom of others."

"The American Revolution of 1776 was a great liberal revolution. The Declaration of Independence and the American Constitution, more than any documents on earth, embody the fundamentals of liberalism. These documents assert the essential equality of human beings. This does not mean, and never did, that one man is as talented, or wise, or good as another, or that each person is entitled to the same rewards. It does mean that every human being has a right to his own life; that no man may be forced to labor against his will, or to assert beliefs contrary to his conscience, or be relegated to one class of society."

"The rise of liberalism was accompanied by immense technological progress; by the industrial revolution; by the division of labor which ensued, and which suddenly, and prodigiously, accelerated the efficiency of production; and by the conception of economic life governed by the market. In other words, of economic life governed by the buyer, not the seller. This was a brand-new and wholly revolutionary idea."

"Pre-eighteenth century economics were governed, not by consumers, who determined what should be produced by what they were willing to buy in a competitive market, but by producers who enjoyed special privileges in return for the most stringent kind of state regulations. Mr. Walter Lippmann, in his book, The Good Society, points out that in the days of Louis XIV the manufacturers of France were told exactly what to produce and exactly how to produce it. Industry and agriculture were governed by codes more complicated than anything ever invented by the NRA or Mr. Wallace."

"The easiest way to simplify society is to reduce it to a military organization. That is the most primitive form of social organization. And that is precisely what is being done. The unit of communal life shrinks. Wealth, prosperity, inventiveness, choice, demand are subordinated to simplified nationalistic aims. The very mind which created the liberal universe becomes atrophied through disuse."

"Liberalism is not being killed by dictators. Liberalism is committing suicide—out of despair and a bad conscience. What liberalism needs is a revival, in the evangelical sense of the word. It needs to admit its sins, as the basis of renewing its life."

"The object of liberty is to give men and women a chance to be their best selves. That is its first and last purpose."

"A slave has no morality, because he cannot choose between good and evil. He has only a derivative morality—that of his masters."

"William Penn summed up the ideal of human liberty in the remark: 'Men must either be governed by God or they must be ruled by tyrants.'"

"Radicals and Conservatives are not at all unlike, temperamentally. They want order, organization, efficiency, perfection. The Conservative or Reactionary thinks these can be best obtained by putting and keeping the power in the hands of a small class. He is afraid that an extension of democracy will destroy form and tradition, which he believes are essential to holding any society together. The Radical is so obsessed by the obvious faults of society that he wants to pull everything up by the roots and start all over again, and build a perfect society according to a blueprint. It is interesting that when the extreme Radicals triumph—in a revolution, for instance, as in Russia—they immediately become rigidly conservative, and punish all deviation rigorously. The worst fundamentalists in the world today are the Russian communists."

"The Liberal is distinguished from the Conservative and the Radical, not only by his basic philosophy but by his methods. Never does he believe that a good end justifies and evil means. He seeks to find everything that binds men together, rather than what divides them, for he loves persuasion and detests coercion."

"The object of mankind is not to live in a perfectly functioning universe, but to live in a tolerable universe, which means one suited to the nature and aspirations of human beings."

"It is intolerable that a whole race should be indicted and banned—each individual, good, bad and indifferent, lumped into one category—as the Jews are in Germany. It is intolerable that we should accept the principle that there is a permanent, irreconcilable and even necessary hostility between workers and the men who employ them—as is positively implied in this country, in the National Labor Relations Act."

"Someday, when women realize that the object of their emancipation is not to make them more like men, but more powerfully womanly, and therefore of greater use to men and themselves and society."

"The fathers of American Democracy had no exaggerated respect for the State, because they were pre-eminently men of reason and common sense. They never, for instance, identified the State with the People. They knew that the State is, by very definition, an instrument of oppression and coercion, and their idea was to make it strong enough to keep order and ward off enemies, and limit it otherwise very strictly."

"The idea of the State being a sort of apotheosis of the People, their ultimate expression and good, was invented for the modern age by the German philosopher, Hegel, and both Karl Marx, the father of Communism, and Mussolini, the inventor of Fascism, got their fundamental philosophy of politics from Hegel."

"Unity, in Fascist terms, means uniformity; freedom of conscience means insubordination; co-ordination means coercion."

"Can one preach at home inequality of races and nations and advocate abroad good-will towards all men?"

"A Frenchman who is in close touch with the situation at home told me this week, 'We would have Fascism in France already if Germany and Italy had not done it first.'"

"For Adolf Hitler's first hatred was not Communism, but Austria-Hungary. Read 'Mein Kampf.' And he loathed it for what? For its tolerance! He wanted eighty million Germans to rule with an iron hand an empire of eighty million 'inferiors' — Czechs, Slovaks, Magyars, Jews, Serbs, Poles and Croats."

"For it is no longer possible to regard Fascism as the friend of Christianity. And in making a cultural treaty with Hitler, Franco has laid Spain wide open to the penetration of Nazi ideology, which has been repeatedly denounced by the Pope himself as anti-Christian."

"The Vatican newspaper in Rome, Osservatore Romano, said of National Socialism, 'It is the most inhumane of all heresies. Hitler is true to his role of anti-Christ.'"

"And now the beginning of the expropriation of church lands in Austria, have all revealed the true face of National Socialism, which more and more among pious Germans is called, under their breaths, 'the brown Bolshevism.'"

"The contribution of Communism to the nihilism of democratic despair has been to shear humanism off democracy, to reduce the concept of democracy to crass materialism, to interpret life in terms of bread alone. The Nazis, as anti-humanistic as the Communists, have elevated the Communist Have-Not doctrine into a war cry for the Have-Not states."

"This kind of thinking is taking a long view, in which one must also count the imponderables, such as the effort of prolonged depression upon restless social forces; the inevitable necessity for National Socialism to move very far to the Left, the possible revolt of the people everywhere against dawdling tactics of their leaders."

"For already the myth is being carefully built up. Hitler is to be the Messiah of organic evolution—the anti-Christ of the will to power, which is not a will to national power but a will to power per se, the liberation of the lustfully destructive from any inhibitions whatsoever."

"The education of the Nazi elite, it turns out, is the education of super-racketeers and gangsters from among the biologically superior. The concept of 'noblesse oblige' is transformed into its polar opposite: into the concept that out of the biologically potentially noble will come a leadership of super-bandits, who will plunder the world; to whom organized murder, terror, espionage, robbery, treachery, the use of the lie, rape — which is flourishing in present-day Germany — will seem the natural, even the organic way of life. And indeed it is, if the inhibitions imposed upon men by centuries of tradition are once completely released."

"It is an interesting and somewhat macabre parlor game to play at a large gathering of one's acquaintances: to speculate who in a showdown would go Nazi. By now, I think I know. I have gone through the experience many times — in Germany, in Austria, and in France. I have come to know the types: the born Nazis, the Nazis whom democracy itself has created, the certain-to-be fellow-travelers. And I also know those who never, under any conceivable circumstances, would become Nazis."

"Germans may be more susceptible to Nazism than most people, but I doubt it. Jews are barred out, but it is an arbitrary ruling. I know lots of Jews who are born Nazis and many others who would heil Hitler tomorrow morning if given a chance. There are Jews who have repudiated their own ancestors in order to become "Honorary Aryans and Nazis"; there are full-blooded Jews who have enthusiastically entered Hitler's secret service. Nazism has nothing to do with race and nationality. It appeals to a certain type of mind. It is also, to an immense extent, the disease of a generation — the generation which was either young or unborn at the end of the last war. This is as true of Englishmen, Frenchmen, and Americans as of Germans. It is the disease of the so-called "lost generation." Sometimes I think there are direct biological factors at work — a type of education, feeding, and physical training which has produced a new kind of human being with an imbalance in his nature. He has been fed vitamins and filled with energies that are beyond the capacity of his intellect to discipline. He has been treated to forms of education which have released him from inhibitions. His body is vigorous. His mind is childish. His soul has been almost completely neglected."

"Mr. A has a life that is established according to a certain form of personal behavior. Although he has no money, his unostentatious distinction and education have always assured him a position. He has never been engaged in sharp competition. He is a free man. I doubt whether ever in his life he has done anything he did not want to do or anything that was against his code. Nazism wouldn't fit in with his standards and he has never become accustomed to making concessions. Mr. B has risen beyond his real abilities by virtue of health, good looks, and being a good mixer. He married for money and he has done lots of other things for money. His code is not his own; it is that of his class — no worse, no better, He fits easily into whatever pattern is successful. That is his sole measure of value — success. Nazism as a minority movement would not attract him. As a movement likely to attain power, it would."

"There he sits: he talks awkwardly rather than glibly; he is courteous. He commands a distant and cold respect. But he is a very dangerous man. Were he primitive and brutal he would be a criminal — a murderer. But he is subtle and cruel. He would rise high in a Nazi regime. It would need men just like him — intellectual and ruthless. But Mr. C is not a born Nazi. He is the product of a democracy hypocritically preaching social equality and practicing a carelessly brutal snobbery. He is a sensitive, gifted man who has been humiliated into nihilism. He would laugh to see heads roll."

"Kind, good, happy, gentlemanly, secure people never go Nazi. They may be the gentle philosopher whose name is in the Blue Book, or Bill from City College to whom democracy gave a chance to design airplanes — you'll never make Nazis out of them. But the frustrated and humiliated intellectual, the rich and scared speculator, the spoiled son, the labor tyrant, the fellow who has achieved success by smelling out the wind of success — they would all go Nazi in a crisis. Believe me, nice people don't go Nazi. Their race, color, creed, or social condition is not the criterion. It is something in them. Those who haven't anything in them to tell them what they like and what they don't — whether it is breeding, or happiness, or wisdom, or a code, however old-fashioned or however modern, go Nazi."

"The American Communist Party is not an autonomous body. Its members, who claim their rights under the American Constitution have already relinquished every personal right to an international, actually Russian, body. Their claim to participate in the political life of America is as preposterous as would be the claim of the Jugoslav Communist Party to participate, because the American, Russian, Jugoslav, Bulgarian, etc., parties are all the same organization."

"All Communists speak of the Soviet Union as their 'Fatherland.' At this seventh Congress, Marcel Cachin, one of the French delegates, said, 'Comrades, all the parties of the Communist International have never been more attached than at the present time to their Fatherland, the Soviet Union."

"[The Communist's] objective is not to secure 'agreements' or 'compromises,' but to use the tribunes of governments for disruptive agitation, and destroy the representative system from within… Any Communist, sitting in any 'bourgeoisie' government, represents only the Communist International."

"To say that it 'unconstitutional' to outlaw and prosecute such a movement is merely to admit that democracies can devise no legal means to protect themselves."

"The publicly propagandized aims of communism are vaguely liberal. One can read the Daily Worker every day for a year without finding any clear exegesis of Communist principle. Like Hitler, Communists, outside their own ranks, promise all things to most men, denouncing only 'monopolists' 'imperialists' (and failing to provide a glossary for their meaning of these terms), opposing race discrimination, child labor, etc."

"Thus, the Communists program for agriculture, universal for all countries, would expropriate entirely all farmers living above subsistence or its margin, who are eventually to be collectivized."

"Russians would be, or are, willing to agree to a partition of the world into 'orbits' or 'spheres of influence,' along familiar lines of power politics. Those who hold this hope have been confusing Stalin with Hitler. Hitler was for the partition of the world, and tried to sell that idea to the British. But Stalin is a Bolshevist—that is, a totalist."

"A continually reaffirmed thesis of communism is that its objectives cannot be realized without ruthless violence nor within the framework of a constitutional order."

"Communist parties are both legal and illegal, and the illegal structure governs the legal. But legality is an enormous aid to the illegal conspiracy. It prevents forthright action against the chief criminals; it leads to roundabout persecution; it enables the Communist to deceive simple, generous-hearted, and gullible citizens, and it leads to dubiously legal actions from the government itself. The present half-legal, half-persecuted position of the Party and its members is not justice. It operates to eliminate one evil with another, both evils containing dangers to the Constitutional order."

"Merely to ban the Communist Party as such would be useless. It would revive, as it did in Canada, under another name."

"No citizen should be permitted to become a member of or contribute to any organization whose members are pledged, or have ever been pledged, to tender prior loyalty to any state other than the United States, or to defend any state other than the United States in case of war, except as in such a war the United States might formally be allied with another power."

"Peace is not the absence of conflict but the presence of creative alternatives for responding to conflict — alternatives to passive or aggressive responses, alternatives to violence."

"“When I set a glass prism on a windowsill and allow the sun to flood through it, a spectrum of colors dances on the floor. What we call "white" is a rainbow of colored rays packed into a small space. The prism sets them free. Love is the white light of emotion.”"

"I don't want to be a passenger in my own life."

"I don't want to get to the end of my life and find that I just lived the length of it. I want to live the width of it as well."

"I plan my garden as I wish I could plan my life, with islands of surprise, color, and scent. A seductive aspect of gardening is how many rituals it requires."

"Human beings are sloshing sacks of chemicals on the move."

"... you don't have to be larger than life to come to the aid of somebody in trouble. All you need to be able to be compassionate, put your own troubles on hold while someone else's are taking the forefront, and, maybe the toughest part, you have to be wholly nonjudgemental."

"... extinction is happening very fast, because we've been destroying habitats — and polluting things. And there may come a time when we want to bring back animals, or we could use the just to the enrich the gene pool of animals that are very close to extinction."

"Why humans feel pain has been the subject of theological debate, philosophical schisms, psychoanalytical edicts, and mumbo jumbo for centuries. Pain was the punishment for wrongdoing in the Garden of Eden. Pain was the price one paid for not being morally perfect. Pain was a self-affliction brought about by sexual repression. Pain was dished out by vengeful gods, or was the result of falling out of harmony with nature…The purpose of pain is to warn the body about possible injury. Millions of free nerve endings alarm us; whenever they’re hit, we feel pain."

"What I’m really wondering is why notices were posted and invitations sent out at all: If it’s a psychics’ convention, shouldn’t everyone just know where and when to meet?"

"We tend to see our distant past through a reverse telescope that compresses it: a short time as hunter-gatherers, a long time as "civilized" people. But civilization is a recent stage of human life, and, for all we know, it may not be any great achievement. It may not even be the final stage. We have been alive on this planet as recognizable humans for about two million years, and for all but the last two or three thousand we’ve been hunter-gatherers. We may sing in choirs and park our rages behind a desk, but we patrol the world with many of a hunter-gatherer’s drives, motives, and skills. These aren’t knowable truths. Should an alien civilization ever contact us, the greatest gift they could give us would be a set of home movies: films of our species at each stage in our evolution."

"Consciousness, the great poem of matter, seems so unlikely, so impossible, and yet here we are with our loneliness and our giant dreams."

"But, as sages have long said, the sexiest part of the body and the best aphrodisiac in the world is the imagination."

"But we rarely taste the real thing. The vanilla flavoring we buy in the spice section of grocery stores, the vanilla we find in most of our ice creams, cakes, yogurts, and other foods, as well as in shampoos and perfumes, is an artificial flavor created in laboratories and mixed with alcohol and other ingredients. Marshall McLuhan once warned us that we were drifting so far away from the real taste of life that we had begun to prefer artificiality, and were becoming content with eating the menu descriptions rather than the food."

"The Dutch carried vanilla to Indonesia, and the British to India. “Tincture of vanilla” didn’t appear in the United States until the 1800s, but when it did, it appealed to the American impatience and aversion to fuss, that sprint through life whose byword is convenience. Europeans use the vanilla bean, luxuriating in its textures, tastes, and aromas, but we preferred it reduced and already bottled. By the nineteenth century, demand flourished, vanilla became synthesized, and the world floated on a mantle of cheap flavoring."

"Though it has a certain Russian-roulette quality to it, eating fugu is considered a highly aesthetic experience. That makes one wonder about the condition that we, in chauvinistic shorthand, referred to as “human.” Creatures who will one day vanish from the earth in the ultimate subtraction of sensuality that we call death, we spend our lives courting death, fomenting wars, watching sickening horror movies in which maniacs slash and torture their victims, hurrying our own deaths in fast cars, cigarette smoking, suicide. Death obsesses us, as well it might, but our response to it is so strange. Faced with tornadoes chewing up homes, with dust storms ruining crops, floods and earthquakes swallowing up whole cities, with ghostly diseases that gnaw at one’s bone marrow, cripple, or craze—rampant miseries that need no special bidding, but come freely, giving their horror like alms—you’d think human beings would hold out against the forces of Nature, combine their efforts and become allies, not create devastation of their own, not add to one another’s miseries. Death does such fine work without us. How strange that people, whole countries sometimes, wish to be its willing accomplices."

"We hallucinate sounds more often than sights. There are auditory mirages, which vanish without trace; auditory illusions that turn out to be something other than they seemed; and, of course, voices that speak to saints, seers, and psychotics, telling them how to act and what to believe."

"Look in the mirror. The face that pins you with its double gaze reveals a chastening secret: You are looking into a predator’s eyes. Most predators have eyes set right on the front of their heads, so they can use binocular vision to sight and track their prey."

"The color we see is always the one being reflected, the one that doesn’t stay put and get absorbed. We see the rejected color, and say “an apple is red.” But in truth an apple is everything but red."

"That evening, as I watched the sunset’s pinwheels of apricot and mauve slowly explode into red ribbons, I thought: The sensory misers will inherit the earth, but first they will make it not worth living on."

"We may pretend that beauty is only skin deep, but Aristotle was right when he observed that "beauty is a far greater recommendation than any letter of introduction.” The sad truth is that attractive people do better in school, where they receive more help, better grades, and less punishment; at work, where they are rewarded with higher pay, more prestigious jobs, and faster promotions; in finding mates, where they tend to be in control of the relationships and make most of the decisions; and among total strangers, who assume them to be interesting, honest, virtuous, and successful. After all, in fairy tales, the first stories most of us hear, the heroes are handsome, the heroines are beautiful, and the wicked sots are ugly. Children learn implicitly that good people are beautiful and bad people are ugly, and society restates that message in many subtle ways as they grow older. So perhaps it’s not surprising that handsome cadets at West Point achieve a higher rank by the time they graduate, or that a judge is more likely to give an attractive criminal a shorter sentence."

"For large minds, the Earth is a small place. Not small enough to exhaust in one lifetime, but a compact home, cozy, buoyant, a place to cherish, the spectral center of our life. But how could we stay at home forever?"

"Most of all, the twentieth century will be remembered as the time when we first began to understand what our address was. The “big, beautiful, blue, wet ball” of recent years is one way to say it. But a more profound way will speak of the orders of magnitude of that bigness, the shades of that blueness, the arbitrary delicacy of beauty itself, the ways in which water has made life possible, and the fragile euphoria of the complex ecosystem that is Earth, an Earth on which, from space, there are no visible fences, or military zones, or national borders."

"My muse is male, has the silvery complexion of the moon, and never speaks to me directly."

"Out-of-body experiences aim to shed the senses, but they cannot. One may see from a new perspective, but it’s still an experience of vision."

"In the Bible, God instructs Moses to burn incense sweet and to His liking. Does God have nostrils? How can a god prefer one smell of this earth to another? The rudiments of decay complete a cycle necessary for growth and deliverance. Carrion smells offensive to us, but delicious to those animals who rely on it for food. What they excrete will make the soil rich and the crops abundant. There is no need for divine election. Perception is itself a form of grace."

"Not everything we feel is felt powerfully enough to send a message to the brain; the rest of the sensations just wash over us, telling us nothing. Much is lost in translation, or is censored, and in any case our nerves don’t all fire at once. Some of them remain silent while others respond. This makes our version of the world somewhat simplistic, given how complex the world is. The body’s quest isn’t for truth, it’s for survival."

"So much of our life passes in a comfortable blur. Living on the senses requires an easily triggered sense of marvel, a little extra energy, and most people are lazy about life. Life is something that happens to them while they wait for death."

"It began in mystery, and it will end in mystery, but what a savage and beautiful country lies in between."

"When art separates this thick tangle of feelings, love bares its bones."

"We think of it as a sort of traffic accident of the heart. It is an emotion that scares us more than cruelty, more than violence, more than hatred. We allow ourselves to be foiled by the vagueness of the word. After all, love requires the utmost vulnerability. We equip someone with freshly sharpened knives; strip naked; then invite him to stand close. What could be scarier?"

"What would dawn have been like, had you awakened? It would have sung through your bones. All I can do this morning is let it sing through mine."

"There are well-dressed foolish ideas just as there are well-dressed fools."

"The media are using a national treasure--that's what the public airwaves are. And they have a responsibility to bring out the full diversity of opinion or lose their licenses."

"In the meantime, it just makes it a little harder to smile. But so does the world."

"I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe, that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day, War and peace, life and death. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society."

"During an Iraqi protest of the US invasion ABC's "Peter Jennings said to Chris Cuomo, "What are they doing out there? What are they saying?" And Cuomo said, “Well, they have these signs that say 'No Blood for Oil,' but when you ask them what that means, they seem very confused. I don't think they know why they're out here." I guess they got caught in a traffic jam. Why not have Peter Jennings, instead of asking someone who clearly doesn't understand why they're out there, invite one of them into the studio, and have a discussion like he does with the generals?"

"You have not only Fox, but MSNBC and NBC-yes, owned by General Electric, one of the major nuclear weapons manufacturers in the world. MSNBC and NBC, as well as FOX, titling their coverage taking the name of what the Pentagon calls the invasion of Iraq: 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'...They research the most effective propagandistic name to call their operation. But for the [capitalist] media to name their coverage what the Pentagon calls it-everyday seeing 'Operation Iraqi Freedom'-you have to ask: if this were state media, how would it be any different?" There are "immigrants now in detention facilities, they have no rights, not even a lawyer. And we have to be there ad we have to watch and we have to listen. We have to tell their stories until they can tell their own"

"[On the interview on Election Day 2000 with then-sitting president Bill Clinton, the Clinton administration threatening to ban her from the White House, and Access journalism]: Well, first of all, we hadn't agreed to any ground rules. Clinton called us. Second, we wouldn't have agreed to any. The only ground rule for good reporting I know is that you don't trade your principles for access. We call it the "access of evil.""

"Going to where the silence is. That is the responsibility of a journalist: giving a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, and beaten down by the powerful. It is the best reason I know to carry our pens, cameras, and microphones into our own communities and out to the wider world."

"We must build a trickle-up media that reflects the true character of this country and its people. A democratic media serving a democratic society."

"We have a decision to make every hour of every day, and that is whether to represent the sword or the shield. Democracy now."

"In 1981, the KKK's Grand Wizard claimed that his greatest act "was engineering the bombing of a left-wing radio station," because he understood how dangerous Pacifica was."

"It's still much the same. On any given day, you can listen to the news on CNN or National Public Radio, then tune in to a Pacifica station. You would think you were hearing reports from different Planets. We inhabit the same planet, but we see it through different lenses."

"I began hosting Democracy Now! in 1996, when it was launched as the only daily election show in public broadcasting. Listener response was enormous. Suddenly the daily struggles of ordinary people workers, immigrants, artists, the employed and the unemployed, those with homes and those without, dissidents, soldiers, people of color-were dignified as news. I call it trickle-up journalism. These are the voices that shape movements-movements that make history. These are people who change the world just as much as generals, bankers, and politicians. They are the mainstream, yet they are ignored by the mainstream media."

"Why has Democracy Now! grown so quickly? Because of the deafening silence in the mainstream media around the issues-and the people that matter most. People are now confronting the most important issues of the millennium: war and peace, life and death. Yet who is shaping the discourse? Generals, corporate executives, and government officials."

"In a society where freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution, our media largely acts as a megaphone for those in power. That's why people are so hungry for independent media-and are starting to make their own."

"Vibrant debate and dissent exist in this country, but you are not reading or hearing about this in the mainstream press."

"If you are opposed to war, you are not a fringe minority. You are not a silent majority. You are part of a silenced majority. Silenced by the mainstream media."

"We are a compassionate people. But people cannot take action if they don't have accurate information."

"This is not a media that is serving a democratic society, where a diversity of views is vital to shaping informed opinions. This is a well-oiled propaganda machine that is repackaging government spin and passing it off as journalism."

"imagine if the U.S. media showed uncensored, hellish images of war-even for one week. What impact would that have? I think we would be able to abolish war."

"The Bush team has invoked a basic principle of propaganda: Control the images and you control the people."

"The lesson had been learned from Vietnam-a lesson in manipulation. In Iraq, there would be no daily television images of the human toll of war. The government and the media would portray a clean war, a war nearly devoid of victims."

"When George W. Bush and his foot soldiers can't build an airtight legal case, suspicion and xenophobia will suffice."

"That is one of the media's most serious responsibilities, to open up the discussion."

"People across the political spectrum are outraged by the profiteering corporations-Bush's corporate criminal sponsors, including Enron, World Com, and Halliburton-robbing our treasury, raiding our pensions, ravaging our wilderness areas, and running away with the loot."

"Media should not be a tool only of the powerful. The media can be a platform for the most important debates of our day: war and peace, freedom and tyranny. The debate must be wide-ranging not just a narrow discussion between Democrats and Republicans embedded in the establishment. We need to break open the box, tear down the boundaries that currently define acceptable discussion. We need a democratic media."

"A democratic media gives us hope. It chronicles the movements and organizations that are making history today. When people hear their neighbors given a voice, see their struggles in what they watch and read, spirits are lifted. People feel like they can make a difference."

"Social change does not spring forth from the minds of generals or presidents-in fact, change is often blocked by the powerful. Change starts with ordinary people working in their communities. And that's where media should start as well."

"In closed-door meetings, nameless trade bureaucrats from 146 countries and multinational corporations were now saying, in effect, you can pass your laws in your democratically elected legislatures to protect workers or the environment. We'll just overturn them at the WTO."

"While the networks were quoting the police saying that they weren't using rubber bullets, independent media reporters were uploading minute-by-minute images as we all picked up the bullets off the street by the handful. While the networks caricatured protesters, showing an endless loop of a single smashed store window, the IMC reporters were interviewing the mothers, fathers, daughters, and sons who had come together to protest against the threat that the WTO posed to their communities. In the IMC dispatches, these people had real names, real jobs, and real concerns."

"What the corporations fear most is that grassroots activists and independent journalists will utilize the same model that companies have used to grab power: globalization. Grassroots globalization."

"The same could be said of Henry Kissinger. While many in the United States still see Nixon and Ford's former secretary of state as an elder statesman, the rest of the world sees him as a war criminal responsible for the deaths and suffering of millions in Chile, Vietnam, Laos, Argentina, East Timor, and Cambodia, to name a few."

"But the true power of this country does not lie in its military, government, or corporations. It lies with individual people struggling every day to better their communities. We must build a trickle-up media that reflects the true character of this country and its people. A democratic media serving a democratic society."

"Our job is to provide a forum for people to speak for themselves, to describe their own experiences. This breaks down stereotypes and bigotry, things that fuel racial profiling, which ultimately endangers us all."

"Hope lies in fighting back. (conclusion)"

"Those who are scorned today are tomorrow's visionaries. (conclusion)"

"Declaring war on the media is a desperate and risky move. But the corporate media, so compromised and atrophied by its own complicity in promoting the lies of the Bush administration, is woefully unprepared to do battle. If the past is any guide, as the government aims a sword at the heart of our civil liberties and freedoms, the media will provide sporadic resistance at best, and at worst, will help drive the sword home."

"It's a sad day when the government no longer has to cover up its dishonesty because the American media does it for them...This is the state of the corporate media today. It's a symptom of what we call the access of evil: journalists trading truth for access. The public unwittingly mistakes the illusion of news for reality."

"We can't even call this a "mainstream" media. It's an extreme media-a media that cheerleads for war. Instead of learning from the media what is actually going on in the world, we get static-a veil of distortion, lies, omissions, and half-truths that obscure reality. As bodies pile up in Iraq and New Orleans, many people are mystified, wondering where it went so wrong. We need a media that creates static of another kind: what the dictionary defines as "criticism, opposition, or unwanted interference." Instead of a media that covers for power, we need a media that covers the movements that create static-and make history. We are not waiting for this alternative media; people are building it right now. Blogs, Indymedia centers, independent filmmakers, and other grassroots media have opened a new way to understand what is happening in the world today."

"we need a media that cuts through the lies and fakery that obscure the truth. A media that is fiercely independent. Unembedded. Journalism that works to inform, not to deceive. The soldiers and civilians in harm's way in Iraq deserve no less. The citizens of the devastated and abandoned Gulf Coast are counting on it. And the people shackled in America's secret gulags cry out for it."

"Free speech is democracy's last line of defense. We must demand it. Defend it. And most of all, use it-now."

"As global temperatures surge, so do oil-company profits, and U.S. soldiers in Iraq...the alarm has sounded: We need a sane energy policy that decreases our oil consumption (the Germans and French, “Old Europe,” use half as much per capita as we do in the U.S.). The potential for environmental disaster, and the prospects of protracted wars for oil, demand no less."

"The twin crises of war and climate change, inexorably linked by our thirst for oil, need a concerted global solution–one that won’t be obtained by cowboy diplomacy. The United States must pursue global consensus, not global conquest–before it is too late."

"Elected officials will not solve our media crisis alone. The grass-roots movement for media reform is growing, and with mass layoffs in newspaper and broadcast newsrooms, critical elections, burgeoning military budgets and multiple wars and occupations, and with emergent and accessible digital-media tools and networks increasingly available to most people, there is no better time to join it."

"Using fear, electoral fraud, and the smokescreen of terrorist attacks, the Bush administration has given us a lesson in how quickly a nation can be hijacked and core tenets of democracy trampled."

"Our government now routinely invades the privacy of its own citizens, then pulls the cloak of national security over its operations to hide its deceptions and blunders from public view. The economy has been trashed, inequality is now at levels not seen since the Great Depression, and at least 5 million more Americans live in poverty than did at the start of the Bush presidency. Many eminent historians and economists are concluding that George W. Bush has earned the distinction of being the "worst president ever." Where is the outrage? The U.S. corporate media and the Democrats complain politely, and then resume their deferential posture to enable the next disaster. The media, so helpful in launching the Iraq War by acting as a conveyor belt for Bush administration lies, has shifted targets and now passes along White House propaganda about Iran."

"Great change begins with small steps taken at home."

"Protesting is an act of love. It is born of a deeply held conviction that the world can be a better, kinder place. Saying "no" to injustice is the ultimate declaration of hope. But the corporate media ignores and ridicules grassroots activists who speak out. Concerned citizens are thus left wondering: Where are the millions marching in the streets to defend human rights, civil liberties, and racial justice? Where is the mass revulsion against the killing and torture being carried out in our name? Where are the environmentalists? Where is the peace movement?"

"activists and peacemakers are everywhere. And they are changing how politics is done."

"Public libraries are a cornerstone of democracy. They are part of the public commons, a sanctuary for the free exchange of information and ideas. But they are under threat. From book banning to government surveillance, libraries have been a target in the "war on terror.""

"My goal as a journalist is to break the sound barrier, to expand the debate, to cut through the static and bring forth voices that are shut out. It is the responsibility of journalists to go where the silence is, to seek out news and people who are ignored, to accurately and clearly report on the issues-issues that the corporate, for-profit media often distort, if they cover them at all. What is typically presented as news analysis is, for the most part, a small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong. While they may appear to differ, they are quibbling over how quickly the bombs should be dropped, not asking whether they should be dropped at all. Unfortunately, as a result, people are increasingly turning away from the news at a time when news media should be providing a forum for discussion-a forum that is honest and open, that weighs all the options, and that includes those deeply affected by U.S. policy around the globe. I am not talking about a fringe minority or the silent majority, but a silenced majority, silenced by the corporate media. The media's job is to be the exception to the rulers, to hold those in power accountable, to challenge, and to ask the hard questions-to be the public watchdog. The media also need to find stories of hope, to tell stories that resonate with people's lives in the real world (not the reel world). ()"

"This is what independent media is all about: unembedded, investigative, international journalism."

"I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across this globe, one we all sit around to debate and discuss the most critical issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society."

"When you hear someone speaking from his or her own experience—a Palestinian child, an Israeli mother, a grandfather from Afghanistan—it breaks down stereotypes that fuel the hate groups that divide society. The media can build bridges between communities, rather than advocating the bombing of bridges."

"In this high-tech digital age, with high-definition television and digital radio, all we get is more static: that veil of distortions, lies, misrepresentations and half-truths that obscures reality. What we need the media to give us is the dictionary definition of static: criticism, opposition, unwanted interference. We need a media that covers power, not covers for power. We need a media that is the fourth estate, not for the state. We need a media that covers the movements that create static and make history."

"With more channels than ever, the lack of any diversity of opinion is breathtaking. Freedom of the press is enshrined in the Constitution, yet our media largely act as a megaphone for those in power."

"As we confront unprecedented crises—from global warming to global warring to a global economic meltdown—there is also an unprecedented opportunity for change. Where will innovative thinkers, grass-roots activists, human-rights leaders and ordinary citizens come together to hash out solutions to today’s most pressing problems?"

"On this 60th anniversary of the Pacifica Radio Network, we should celebrate the tradition of dissent and the power of diverse voices to resolve conflict peacefully."

"In order to make the cuts promised, Obama would have to raise taxes and cut social programs such as Social Security and Medicare. Or he could cut the war budget. I say “war budget” because it is not to be confused with a defense budget. Cities and states across the country are facing devastating budget crises. Pensions are being wiped out. Foreclosures are continuing at record levels. A true defense budget would shore up our schools, our roads, our towns, our social safety net. The U.S. House of Representatives is under pressure to pass a $33 billion Afghan War supplemental this week. We can’t afford war."

"Sunday’s network talk shows barely raised the issue of the largest intelligence leak in U.S. history. When asked, they say the midterm elections are their main focus. Fine, but war is an election issue. It should be raised in every debate, discussed on every talk show."

"As the 2010 elections come to a close, the biggest winner of all remains undeclared: the broadcasters. The biggest loser: democracy...The place where we should debate this is in the major media, where most Americans get their news. But the television and radio broadcasters have a profound conflict of interest. Their profits take precedence over our democratic process."

"We need a media that covers grassroots movements, that seeks to understand and explain the complex forces that shape our society, a media that empowers people with information to make sound decisions on the most vital issues of the day: war and peace, life and death. Instead, the media system in the United States, increasingly concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer multinational corporations, spews a relentless stream of base "reality" shows (which depict anything but reality), hollow excuses for local news that highlight car accidents and convenience store robberies larded with ads, and the obsessive coverage of traffic, sports, and extreme weather (never linked to another two words: climate change). Perhaps most harmful of all, we get the same small circle of pundits who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong."

"The corporate media came late to Occupy Wall Street, offered superficial, often derogatory coverage, and, with a few exceptions, still haven't gotten it right"

"Skeptical of the corporare media, people have developed their own."

"At the heart of the Occupy Wall Street movement is the critique that wealth and opportunity are not equitably distributed, and our media system, largely controlled by corporations, contributes to that status quo."

"The Internet has created a seismic disruption to the balance of power in the media. It is getting easier and easier to post your thoughts, photos, or videos. Yet the Wild West of the Web is being tamed. Small Internet service providers are being driven out of business, with corporations like Comcast, Time Warner, Verizon, and AT&T dominating the market. Privacy, security, and the freedom to publish without fear of censorship are dwindling with each merger, with each effort by corporate lobbyists to further restrict the open Internet in favor of a narrow profit advantage."

"By stripping away the profit motive, by removing the Wall Street bankers from the picture, solid, disciplined, nonprofit journalism is possible."

"While law-abiding Muslims are forced to hide in their homes, and animal-rights activists are labeled as terrorists for undercover filming of abusive treatment at factory farms, right-wing hate groups are free to organize, parade, arm themselves to the hilt and murder with chilling regularity. It’s time for our society to confront this very real threat."

"This bears repeating: the sixty-two wealthiest people-a group that could fit on a bus-control more wealth than three and a half billion people."

"A global movement is challenging the grotesque levels of economic inequality that are the hallmark of the modern age. From the Arab Spring, to Occupy Wall Street, to antiausterity campaigns in Europe, to low-wage workers in the United States fighting and winning a livable wage, each part of the movement inspires the other. (p 168)"

"Independent media is the oxygen of a democracy. It is not brought to you by the oil or gas or coal companies when we talk about climate change. It's not brought to you by the weapons manufacturers when we talk about war and peace. It's not brought to you by the insurance industry or big pharma when we talk about health care. (Epilogue)"

"I see the media as a huge kitchen table that stretches across the globe that we all sit around and debate and discuss the most important issues of the day: war and peace, life and death...Anything less than that is a disservice to a democratic society. (Epilogue)"

"Many have attributed low participation in US elections to voter apathy. I have never believed this. The low turnout is directly related to the many obstacles put in place that deter people from voting (for example, holding elections on just one day when most people are working, limiting hours that polling places are open, or requiring photo identification that disproportionately disenfranchises poor people and people of color). And then there are those who feel that there isn't a significant difference between the candidates, or that money distorts the process so much that their vote doesn't really count. Yet people are engaged in their communities all over the country."

"There is a hunger for authentic voices-not the same handful of pundits on the network shows who know so little about so much, explaining the world to us and getting it so wrong."

"There's a reason why our profession is the only one explicitly protected by the US Constitution: journalists are supposed to be the check and balance on power, not win popularity contests. The United States has 5 percent of the world's population but 25 percent of the prisoners. It's the job of journalists to put our microphones between the bars and broadcast the voices of those inside."

"when you hear someone speaking for themselves-whether it's a Palestinian child or an Israeli grandmother, or an uncle in Afghanistan or an aunt in Iraq-it challenges the stereotypes that fuel the hate groups. It's not that you have to agree with what you hear. How often do we agree even with our family members? But you begin to understand where they're coming from. That understanding is the beginning of peace."

"I believe the media can be the greatest force for peace on Earth. Instead, all too often, it is wielded as a weapon of war. That has to be challenged."

"Even in this high-tech digital age with high-definition television and digital radio, still all we get is static: that veil of distortion, lies, misrepresentations, and half-truths that obscure reality."

"We need a media that covers power, not covers for power."

"Journalists have a special job. We have to cover the convention floor to question the delegates and politicians. We have to get into the corporate suites to see who is paying for the conventions. And we have to get out on the streets where the uninvited guests are sometimes thousands of them. These protesters have something important to say as well. Democracy is a messy thing. And it's our job to capture it all."

"What gives me hope? It's the movements. Movements often start with a courageous act of resistance. These are not isolated acts. They are inspired by past movements. And they inspire future ones."

"Central to our reporting on climate change is the reality that global warming is real, is happening now, and is killing tens of thousands of people and displacing millions more. The warming planet presents an existential crisis for humanity."

"Television stations pour millions of dollars into building flashy "Weather Centers" to grab their audience's attention. As they flash the words "Severe Weather" and "Extreme Weather," why not also flash the words, "Climate Change" or "Global Warming"? The public depends on broadcasters for most of their news and information, even in this internet age. The daily deluge of sensational weather reporting must include explanations of the deeper changes occurring on our planet."

"Why does the climate change debate continue in the United States? Because oil barons, such as the Koch brothers, pour billions of dollars into foundations and corporations that obfuscate the issue or deny the problem exists at all."

"Our responsibility in independent media is to cover the entire discussion, from the suites to the streets."

"The young people at these climate summits have always amazed me with their eloquence and bravery."

"We need to hear these silenced voices. That is the power of independent media: to give voice to the voiceless; to those who have been shut out of the debate."

"The United Nations, the Red Cross and other relief organizations have refused to work with the U.S. on delivering aid to Venezuela, which they say is politically motivated. Venezuela has allowed aid to be flown in from Russia and from some international organizations, but it’s refused to allow in the aid from the United States, describing it as a Trojan horse for an eventual U.S. invasion."

"Over the weekend, U.S. officials ramped up pressure on the Maduro government. On Sunday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Maduro’s days in office are numbered. He also threatened more sanctions are coming. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida tweeted the violence on the border, quote, “opened the door to various potential multilateral actions not on the table just 24 hours ago,” unquote. In what many saw as a cryptic threat to Maduro, Rubio tweeted an image of a bloodied Muammar Gaddafi as he was being killed following the U.S. bombing campaign of Libya. Rubio also tweeted photos of former Panamanian leader Manuel Noriega, who was removed from power during the U.S. invasion in 1989 and remained in a U.S. jail for years."

"We turn now to... a rare joint interview with the Squad. That’s the group of four freshwomen Democratic congresswomen who have taken Capitol Hill by storm: Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York, Ayanna Pressley of Massachusetts and Rashida Tlaib of Michigan. Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib are the first Muslim women elected to Congress. Ilhan Omar is a former refugee from Somalia. Tlaib is the first female Palestinian-American member of Congress. Ayanna Pressley is the first African-American woman elected to Congress from Massachusetts. And Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was just 29 years old when she took office last year, making her the youngest woman to serve in Congress. Born to a mother from Puerto Rico and father from the South Bronx, AOC has quickly become one of the most popular lawmakers in the country. All four members of the Squad have been active on the presidential campaign trail. Ocasio-Cortez, Tlaib and Omar have been campaigning for Bernie Sanders. Ayanna Pressley has backed Elizabeth Warren. Last week, Congresswomen Ocasio-Cortez and Pressley boycotted President Trump’s State of the Union. Rashida Tlaib walked out during the speech. Ilhan Omar stayed, saying, quote, “My presence tonight is resistance.”"

"On the first Earth Day, in 1970, over 20 million people in the United States — fully ten percent of the nation’s population at the time — rallied for an end to pollution, for an ecologically sustainable economy, for a greener future...Fifty years later, with the planet’s climate on a human-caused precipice, the numbers demanding change are far greater, the organizing is global, but the time is short."

"This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The War and Peace Report, The Quarantine Report. I’m Amy Goodman. As the nationwide uprising against police brutality and racism continues to roil the nation and the world, bringing down Confederate statues and forcing a reckoning in city halls and on the streets, President Trump defended law enforcement Thursday, dismissing growing calls to defund the police. He spoke at a campaign-style event at a church in Dallas, Texas, announcing a new executive order advising police departments to adopt national standards for use of force. Trump did not invite the top three law enforcement officials in Dallas, who are all African American."

"Speaking about what’s going on in the West Bank right now and about the whole issue of international solidarity, the global response to the killing of George Floyd. In the occupied West Bank, protesters denounced Floyd’s murder and the recent killing of Iyad el-Hallak, a 32-year-old Palestinian special needs student who was shot to death by Israeli forces in occupied East Jerusalem. He was reportedly chanting “Black lives matter” and “Palestinian lives matter,” when Israeli police gunned him down, claiming he was armed. These links that you’re seeing, not only in Palestine and the United States, but around the world, the kind of global response, the tens of thousands of people who marched in Spain, who marched in England, in Berlin, in Munich, all over the world, as this touches a chord and they make demands in their own countries, not only in solidarity with what’s happening in the United States?"

"Chadwick Boseman, the world-renowned actor known best for his groundbreaking role in the 2018 blockbuster hit Black Panther died on Friday at the age of 43 after a private four-year battle with colon cancer. News of his passing shocked the public and sparked a wave of tributes to the man who played Jackie Robinson, the first black athlete to play Major League Baseball; Thurgood Marshall, the first black justice on the U.S. Supreme Court; and of course superhero King T’Challa, all while being treated for cancer....The final tweet from the account of Black Panther star Chadwick Boseman has become the most-liked post in Twitter history. The social media company’s official feed announced the news. The original message – posted on Saturday... currently has more than 7m “likes”. (The previous most-liked tweet was by Barack Obama, with 4.3m.) The post said that his most famous roles were “filmed during and between countless surgeries and chemotherapy”. It added: “The family thanks you for your love and prayers, and asks that you continue to respect their privacy during this difficult time....” LA Lakers star Lebron James paid tribute to Chadwick Boseman before the Lakers playoff game against the Portland Trailblazers by taking a knee during the National Anthem and crossing his arms across his chest to give the Wakanda Forever salute."

"The death toll in Gaza has reached 213 as Israel continues to attack the besieged area by air, land and sea using U.S.-made warplanes and U.S.-made bombs. Health officials in Gaza say the dead include 61 children and 36 women. Over 1,400 Palestinians have been injured. The United Nations says 58,000 Palestinians have been displaced. Meanwhile, the death toll in Israel stands at 11 from rocket attacks fired from Gaza."

"Israel is the largest recipient of U.S. military aid, receiving some $3.8 billion a year. In recent weeks, the Biden administration approved the sale of $735 million in precision-guided weapons to Israel. But House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Gregory Meeks is expected to ask for the sale to be delayed to give lawmakers more time to review it. Israel has relied heavily on U.S.-made weapons during its assault. Israel reportedly used a GBU-31 bomb made by Lockheed Martin to bring down a high-rise building on Saturday which housed the offices of many media outlets, including the Associated Press and Al Jazeera. Israel is also facing increasing criticism for targeting doctors and health clinics. On Monday, an Israeli strike damaged the only COVID-19 laboratory in Gaza. On Sunday, a massive Israeli airstrike killed Dr. Ayman Abu al-Ouf, who headed the coronavirus response at Shifa Hospital, Gaza’s largest hospital. He and two of his teenage children died in an Israeli bombing of the residential area of Gaza City that killed a total of 30 people. Another prominent doctor from Shifa Hospital, Mooein Ahmad al-Aloul, one of the only neurologists in Gaza, was killed in an airstrike on his home. Israel has also bombed many of the roads leading to Shifa Hospital, making it harder for ambulances to bring patients. According to the World Health Organization, Israeli strikes and shelling have damaged at least 18 hospitals and clinics."

"The United States is on pace to spend over $7 trillion over the next ten years for the Pentagon. To put that number in perspective, the U.S. spends more each year on the military than China, Russia, India, the U.K., Germany, France, Japan, South Korea and Australia combined. While Republicans and Democrats are in sharp disagreements over the much smaller Build Back Better legislation, there is largely a bipartisan consensus when it comes to the military budget and foreign military intervention..."

"The new coronavirus variant Omicron is spreading across the world at an unprecedented rate. The World Health Organization warns cases of the heavily mutated variant have been confirmed in 77 countries, and likely many others that have yet to detect it. With international infections climbing, the Biden administration is facing renewed demands to follow through on his now seven-month-old pledge to ensure companies waive intellectual property protections on coronavirus vaccines and share them with the world. Now a group of vaccine experts has just released a list of over a hundred companies in Africa, Asia and Latin America with the potential to produce mRNA vaccines to fight COVID-19. They say it’s one of the most viable solutions to fight vaccine inequity around the world and combat the spread of coronavirus variants, including Omicron."

"As Israel rejects growing international calls for a ceasefire in Gaza, there are mounting efforts to hold Israel and its backers accountable for committing war crimes in Gaza. Here in the United States, the Center for Constitutional Rights has sued President Biden, accusing him of failing to prevent genocide. Today CCR is seeking an emergency order to block Biden, as well as Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, from providing further military funding, arms and diplomatic support to Israel."

"Amy Goodman has taken investigative journalism to new heights of exciting, informative, and probing analysis. She has tirelessly pursued the most challenging and hardest questions, relentlessly and courageously. She has made a unique contribution to creating the informed public that must exist if 'democracy now' is to be more than a dream.""

"(What's the most important piece of information that is not making it into the media coverage?) ED: I suppose it depends on what you watch. If you watch Amy Goodman of Democracy Now, for example, she has the time and inclination to tell a larger story."

"Amy Goodman is one of the most important voices in America. Her integrity and honesty remind us that a culture that cannot distinguish between illusion and reality dies."

"Producing features on a diverse range of civic and political activities is far below NPR's and PBS's funder-friendly range of entertaining programs. On weekends, to counter the commercial vapidity and the ditto-head Sunday interview shows, PBS and NPR are just not there. They simply do not look for, or listen to, the rumble of people who are on the ground, acting with conscience, organizing to break through power. Meanwhile, smaller programs-such as Democracy Now with Amy Goodman-are picking up the slack of these larger outlets, despite their comparably modest budgets and staff size."

"She will go down in history as one of the voices of democracy's greatest champions."

"The poem was inflected, you could say, by interviews I was hearing on Amy Goodman’s program, Democracy Now!—about Guantánamo, waterboarding, official U.S. denials of torture, the “renditioning” of presumed terrorists to countries where they would inevitably be tortured. The line “Tonight I think no poetry will serve” suggests that no poetry can serve to mitigate such acts, they nullify language itself. One begins to write of the sensual body, but other bodies “elsewhere” are terribly present."

"Amy Goodman and Democracy Now! represent what journalism should be: beholden to the interests of people, not power and profit. Her work is invaluable."

"There are many Americans who would be mortified to be associated with their government's policies. The most scholarly, scathing, incisive, hilarious critiques of the hypocrisy and the contradictions in U.S. government policy come from American citizens. When the rest of the world wants to know what the U.S. government is up to, we turn to Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Howard Zinn, Ed Herman, Amy Goodman, Michael Albert, Chalmers Johnson, William Blum, and Anthony Arnove to tell us what's really going on."

"We received very fair coverage in our campaign from Thom Hartmann, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks, and Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! The folks at The Nation, In These Times, The Progressive, and a number of other smaller publications and blogs also worked extremely hard to allow us to convey our message to the American people. Ed Schultz, the Reverend Al Sharpton, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Hayes provided us with the very fair coverage we received on MSNBC. I was also pleased to have been on the Bill Moyers program on PBS on several occasions."

"Amy Goodman is not afraid to speak truth to power. She does it every day."

"A towering progressive freedom fighter in the media and the world."

"Amy Goodman has carried the great muckraking tradition of Upton Sinclair, George Seldes, and I. F. Stone into the electronic age, creating a powerful counter to the mainstream media. Her programs have reached into homes across the country, educating a new generation of listeners on the realities of U.S. policy at home and abroad. The book she has done with her brother is a very welcome and important addition to the dissident literature of our time."

"You can learn more of the truth about Washington and the world from one week of Amy Goodman's Democracy Now! than from a month of Sunday morning talk shows. Make that a year of Sunday morning talk shows. That's because Amy, as you will discover on every page of this book, knows the critical question for journalists is how close they are to the truth, not how close they are to power."

"It takes the nerves, stamina, and willpower of an Olympic triathlete to do what Amy Goodman does. That's just who she is, this quiet-spoken tornado of muckraking journalism: Edward R. Murrow with a twist of Emma Goldman, a Washington Post reporter once noted-willing to take on the powers that be to get at truth and justice, then spreading the word of those two indispensable gospels to the republic and the world beyond."

""We stand with journalists around the world who deeply believe that the mission of a journalist is to go where the silence is," Amy Goodman said in December 2008 when she accepted the Right Livelihood Award for personal courage and transformation. "The responsibility of a journalist is to give a voice to those who have been forgotten, forsaken, beaten down by the powerful." And, at a time when the future of journalism is in question, this ringing rationale for our embattled but essential craft: "It's the best reason I know for us to carry our pens, our microphones, and our cameras, both into our own communities and out to the wider world." Right on."

"I can be. I do not normally try to be. In fact, there have been some reviews—which I’ve loved—that said I didn't try to sell my show on sex, that I sang my show. On the other hand, I know I'm cute. I can dance. I don't have a bad figure. I know exactly what I am. I'm certainly no great beauty. I know exactly how far I can go."

"I phoned Prince out of the blue, hummed a melody, and he listened," … "I hung up, and he came over within the hour. He listened again, and I said, 'Do you hate it?' He said, 'No,' and walked over to the synthesizers that were set up, was absolutely brilliant for about twenty five minutes, and then left. He was so uncanny, so wild, he spoiled me for every band I've ever had because nobody can exactly re-create—not even with two piano players-what Prince did all by his little self."

"I met Lindsey in high school in San Francisco. We had gone to some party and he was sitting in the middle of this gorgeous living room playing a song. I walked over and stood next to him, and the song was "California Dreaming," and I just started singing with him. And so I just threw in my Michelle Phillips harmony, and he was so beautiful. And then I didn't really see him again until two years later, when he called me and asked me if I wanted to be in his rock 'n' roll band, which I didn't even know existed. And within two or three months we were opening for Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, all the San Francisco bands. Two years later, we packed up and moved to Los Angeles with about 12 demos."

"…People would say to me: ‘It would be very hard to be Mr. Stevie Nicks.’ And I’m going: well, yeah, probably, unless you were just a really nice guy that was really confident in himself, not jealous of me, liked my friends, enjoyed my crazy life and had fun with it. And, of course, there are very few men like that. I’m an independent woman and am able to take care of myself, and that is not attractive to men.”."

"…If I had not had that abortion, I’m pretty sure there would have been no Fleetwood Mac. There’s just no way that I could have had a child then, working as hard as we worked constantly. And there were a lot of drugs, I was doing a lot of drugs … I would have had to walk away…And I knew that the music we were going to bring to the world was going to heal so many people’s hearts and make people so happy. And I thought: you know what? That’s really important. There’s not another band in the world that has two lead women singers, two lead women writers. That was my world’s mission."

"I sat at my piano, a feminist woman, and I wrote it, to say that nothing you or anybody else can do to me can change the fact that, as the opening line goes: ‘Every night that goes between / I feel a little less.’...Freedom…I am a totally free woman, and I am independent, and that’s exactly what I always wanted to be."

"It's just about a lady who's a goddess of steeds and a maker of birds."

"I look around at all the girl singers, and I think they're all my children... and they're all going to do this... And, yes, maybe I inspired them because I did get through a lot, and I did have the same problems that they're going to have. You do have to give up a lot for it."

"Lindsey [Buckingham] and I went up to Aspen and we went to somebody's incredible house and they had a piano and I had my guitar with me and I went in their living room, looking out over the incredible Aspen sky and I wrote 'Landslide.'"

"When I thought I was dying in rehab in 1994, 'I Won't back Down' was my mantra. It lifted my up out of the pain and made me fight through it. 'The Waiting'... summed up my life. We can't stand waiting, we rock 'n' roll men and women. Tom Petty's songs are like a great book that you revisit when you need help. His songs make me better."

"That’s the words: "So I’m back to the velvet underground"—which is a clothing store in downtown San Francisco, where Janis Joplin got her clothes, and Grace Slick from Jefferson Airplane, it was this little hole in the wall, amazing, beautiful stuff—”back to the floor that I love, to a room with some lace and paper flowers, back to the gypsy that I was.""

"I'm going to spend my life writing poems, turning them into music that will affect people and touch their hearts. I'm going to write the songs that people can't write for themselves."

"We all did everything we could do to try and talk her out of [quitting]. But you look in someone's eyes and you can tell they're finished. As Taylor Swift would say: 'We are never ever getting back together ever!' That's what Chris was saying... But I'd beg, borrow and scrape together $5 million and give it to her in cash if she would come back. That's how much I miss her."

"…The reason I chose that kind of a platform boot was because the rest of my outfit is so filmy and floaty that I thought: If you’re going to wear that outfit, if you just wore a pair of stiletto high heels with ankle straps, it would look really pretty, but it would be way too airy-fairy. But if you put on a pair of really strong suede boots to your knee, that have got a substantial little platform and a really good heel, then if somebody tries to drag you off that stage, you can seriously kick them with that boot. And so those boots are not just a fashion statement. They are to make people understand that I’m not a ballerina. As much as I would have loved to be a ballerina, I’m not a ballerina — I’m a rock ‘n’ roll singer. And so when people get too close to me, I can just feel my foot starting to raise, you know? It’s like my karate moment. A few times I’ve said, “Let go of my hand,” and some people don’t. And my foot starts to raise, and they get it, like, “I don’t want to be kicked with that boot. So I better back off.” So they have their moments where I feel like they’re a weapon."

"…I put them in my journal. And if I have a really big, important show, I call in all my spirits, and I say, “Tom, stand behind me. Prince, stand with me.” I ask for their help, because I know they’re up there. The Prince thing started a long time ago, because sometimes even before Prince died, I would say that. I wish Prince was here and he could just walk with me out there; because of his performing ability and how good he was on stage, sometimes I’d just go, “Come with me.” And I really do feel the presence, you know. I mean, Tom and I were way, way better friends than I was friends with Prince, because I hardly ever saw Prince. When I did see Prince, we’d have some really important conversations, and we talked on the phone sometimes for a couple hours. But Tom was a different kind of friend. Tom was really my buddy friend. I spent a lot of time at Tom’s different houses, and a lot of time with his family when he was still married to Jane. And that was a very hard loss for me."

"She rings like a bell through the night And wouldn't you love to love her?"

"Dreams unwind Love's a state of mind"

"I'll begin not to love you Turn around, see me runnin' I'll say I loved you years ago Tell myself you never loved me, no And did you say she was pretty? And did you say that she loves you? Baby, I don't wanna know."

"Thunder only happens when it's raining, Players only love you when they're playing, Say, women, they will come and they will go, When the rain washes you clean you'll know."

"I don't want to know the reasons why, Love keeps right on walking down the line."

"Well, did she make you cry, Make you break down, Shatter your illusions of love?"

"The clouds, never expect it, When it rains But the sea changes color, But the sea does not change, And so with the slow graceful Flow of age, I went forth with an, Age old desire to please, On the edge of seventeen."

"Is love so fragile, And the heart so hollow, Shatter with words, Impossible to follow, You're saying I'm fragile, I try not to be, I search only, for something I can't see."

"No one knows how I feel, What I say unless you read between my lines, One man walked away from me First he took my hand, take me home."

"A wound gets worse when it's treated with neglect."

"Stevie Nicks is the high priestess of her own religion, ruling a world of prancing Gypsies, gold-dust princesses, and white-winged doves, all without going anywhere near a sensible shoe. Like David Bowie or Bryan Ferry, she has spent a career turning her private fantasies into an elaborate pop mythology."

"Witchcraft became part of the rock sensibility in the '70s, when Stevie Nicks twirled onstage swathed in scarves, bathed in incense smoke, and illuminated by hundreds of candles."

"Stevie bridges the gap between the powerful rock singers of the sixties, like Janis Joplin and Grace Slick, and what's going on today."

"She had a huge influence on everybody, whether they admit it or not."

"Life is not the way it’s supposed to be. It’s the way it is. The way you cope with it is what makes the difference."

"I think if I have one message, one thing before I die that most of the world would know, it would be that the event does not determine how to respond to the event. That is a purely personal matter. The way in which we respond will direct and influence the event more than the event itself."

"Why Family Therapy?...because it deals with family pain."

"A growing body of clinical observation has pointed to the conclusion that the family therapy must be oriented to the family as a whole."

"I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen, heard, understood and touched by them. The greatest gift I can give is to see, hear, understand and touch another person. When this is done, I feel contact has been made."

"I have often thought had there been somebody like me around, something might have been able to be done. I also think I don't see how I could have done what I've done in the world had I been married. And when I decided-because I've been on the verge of marriage many times-I said no, because if I wanted to roam the globe like I did, it wouldn't be fair. It wouldn't be fair to me, it wouldn't be fair to the people. At the point, I really feel it was a kind of destiny because I've been able to get to places. There are some people in the world who have other jobs to do."

"To all my friends, colleagues and family: I send you love. Please support me in my passage to a new life. I have no other way to thank you than this. You have all played a significant part in my development of loving. As a result, my life has been rich and full, so I leave feeling very grateful."

"We need 4 hugs a day for survival. We need 8 hugs a day for maintenance. We need 12 hugs a day for growth."

"Recently I have received echoes down this way of the Hanover County School Board's activities, and what I've heard makes me wonder if any of its members can read. Surely it is plain to the simplest intelligence that To Kill a Mockingbird spells out in words of seldom more than two syllables a code of honor and conduct, Christian in its ethic, that is the heritage of all Southerners. To hear that the novel is "immoral" has made me count the years between now and 1984, for I have yet to come across a better example of doublethink."

"Well, they’re Southern people, and if they know you are working at home they think nothing of walking right in for coffee. But they wouldn’t dream of interrupting you at golf."

"Lawyers, I suppose, were children once."

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing."

"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view — until you climb into his skin and walk around in it."

"As I inched sluggishly along the treadmill of the Maycomb County school system, I could not help receiving the impression that I was being cheated out of something. Out of what I knew not, yet I did not believe that twelve years of unrelieved boredom was exactly what the state had in mind for me."

"And it's certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?"

"The sixth grade seemed to please him from the beginning: he went through a brief Egyptian Period that baffled me — he tried to walk flat a great deal, sticking one arm in front of him and one in back of him, putting one foot behind the other. He declared Egyptians walked that way; I said if they did I didn't see how they got anything done, but Jem said they accomplished more than the Americans ever did, they invented toilet paper and perpetual embalming, and asked where would we be today if they hadn't? Atticus told me to delete the adjectives and I'd have the facts."

"When a child asks you something, answer him, for goodness' sake. But don't make a production of it. Children are children, but they can spot an evasion quicker than adults, an evasion simply muddles 'em."

"Bad language is a stage all children go through, and it dies with time when they learn they're not attracting attention with it, hotheadedness isn't."

"Why reasonable people go stark raving mad when anything involving a Negro comes up, is something I don't pretend to understand."

"I'd rather you shot at tin cans in the back yard, but I know you'll go after birds. Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." That was the only time I ever heard Atticus say it was a sin to do something, and I asked Miss Maudie about it. “Your father's right," she said. "Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird."

"People in their right minds never take pride in their talents."

"They're certainly entitled to think that, and they're entitled to full respect for their opinions... but before I can live with other folks I've got to live with myself. The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience."

"It was times like these when I thought my father, who hated guns and had never been to any wars, was the bravest man who ever lived."

"It's never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just shows you how poor that person is, it doesn't hurt you."

"I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It's when you know you're licked before you begin, but you begin anyway and see it through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do."

"Folks don’t like to have somebody around knowin’ more than they do. It aggravates ‘em. You’re not gonna change any of them by talkin’ right, they’ve got to want to learn themselves, and when they don’t want to learn there’s nothing you can do but keep your mouth shut or talk their language."

"She seemed glad to see me when I appeared in the kitchen, and by watching her I began to think there was some skill involved in being a girl."

"Atticus had said it was the polite thing to talk to people about what they were interested in, not about what you were interested in."

"So it took an eight-year-old child to bring 'em to their senses.... That proves something — that a gang of wild animals can be stopped, simply because they're still human. Hmp, maybe we need a police force of children."

"“There has been a request,” Judge Taylor said, “that this courtroom be cleared of spectators, or at least of women and children, a request that will be denied for the time being. People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for, and they have the right to subject their children to it, but I can assure you of one thing: you will receive what you see and hear in silence or you will leave this courtroom, but you won’t leave it until the whole boiling of you come before me on contempt charges. Mr. Ewell, you will keep your testimony within the confines of Christian English usage, if that is possible. Proceed, Mr. Gilmer.”"

"Apparently, Mayella's recital had given her confidence, but it was not her father's brash kind: there was something stealthy about hers, like a steady-eyed cat with a twitchy tail."

"Slowly but surely I began to see the pattern of questions: from questions that Mr.Gilmer did not deem sufficiently irrelevant or immaterial to object to, Atticus was quietly building up before the jury the picture of the Ewell's home life."

"I’m no idealist to believe firmly in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system — that is no ideal to me, it is a living, working reality. Gentlemen, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up."

"The one place where a man ought to get a square deal is in a courtroom, be he any color of the rainbow, but people have a way of carrying their resentments right into a jury box. As you grow older, you’ll see white men cheat black men every day of your life, but let me tell you something and don’t you forget it — whenever a white man does that to a black man, no matter who he is, how rich he is, or how fine a family he comes from, that white man is trash."

"But there is one way in this country in which all men are created equal — there is one human institution that makes a pauper the equal of a Rockefeller, the stupid man the equal of an Einstein, and the ignorant man the equal of any college president. That institution, gentlemen, is a court. It can be the Supreme Court of the United States or the humblest J.P. court in the land, or this honourable court which you serve. Our courts have their faults, as does any human institution, but in this country our courts are the great levellers, and in our courts all men are created equal."

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill. "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off." "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem. "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them." "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown. I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."

"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."

"In the secret courts of men's hearts Atticus had no case. Tom was a dead man the minute Mayella Ewell opened her mouth and screamed."

"An' they chased him 'n' never could catch him 'cause they didn't know what he looked like, an' Atticus, when they finally saw him, why he hadn't done any of those things... Atticus, he was real nice..." "Most people are, Scout, when you finally see them."

"Atticus was right. One time he said you never really know a man until you stand in his shoes and walk around in them. Just standing on the Radley porch was enough."

"From now on it’ll be everybody less one—"

"That’s because you can’t hold something in your mind but a little while, said Jem. It’s different with grown folks, we—"

"Well if you don’t want me to grow up talkin‘ that way, why do you send me to school?"

"Atticus said that Jem was trying hard to forget something, but what he was really doing was storing it away for a while, until enough time passed. Then he would be able to think about it and sort things out. When he was able to think about it, Jem would be himself again."

"...before I can live with other folks I’ve got to live with myself."

"...brown but backwards"

"Each child was supposed to clip an item from a newspaper, absorb its contents, and reveal them to the class. This practice allegedly overcame a variety of evils: standing in front of his fellows encouraged good posture and gave a child poise; delivering a short talk made him word-conscious; learning his current event strengthened his memory; being singled out made him more than ever anxious to return to the Group."

"...he said if enough people—a stadium full, maybe—were to concentrate on one thing, such as setting a tree afire in the woods, that the tree would ignite of its own accord. I toyed with the idea of asking everyone below to concentrate on setting Tom Robinson free, but"

"Mount Everest: throughout my early life, she was cold and there."

"...reasonable men, they went because we were there. There’s something in our world that makes men lose their heads—they couldn’t be fair if they tried."

"Shoot all the bluejays you want, if you can hit ‘em, but remember it’s a sin to kill a mockingbird."

"There is not a person in this courtroom who has never told a lie, who has never done an immoral thing, and there is no man living who has never looked upon a woman without desire."

"When the new wore off his grandfather’s watch, and carrying it became a day’s burdensome task, Jem no longer felt the necessity of ascertaining the hour every five minutes."

"I remember the lasting impression that Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird had on me. I read that book again every decade or so."

"She's like a national treasure. She's someone who has made a difference … with this book. The book is still as strong as it ever was, and so is the film. All the kids in the United States read this book and see the film in the seventh and eighth grades and write papers and essays. My husband used to get thousands and thousands of letters from teachers who would send them to him."

"I crossed a threshold of reader pride after finishing “To Kill a Mockingbird.”"

"I have often asked myself whether, given the choice, I would choose to have manic-depressive illness. ... Strangely enough, I think I would choose to have it. It's complicated. Depression is awful beyond words or sounds or images ... So why would I want anything to do with this illness? Because I honestly believe that as a result of it I have felt more things, more deeply; had more experiences, more intensely; ... worn death 'as close as dungarees', appreciated it - and life - more; seen the finest and most terrible in people ... But, normal or manic, I have run faster, thought faster, and loved faster than most I know. And I think much of this is related to my illness - the intensity it gives to things"

"If I can't feel, if I can't move, if I can't think, and I can't care, then what conceivable point is there in living?"

"I had been too long away from the nobility; I had forgotten how silly even the best of them could be."

"I hate to waste a really good threat."

"You will never lose your nerve. Your life, probably, but never your nerve.""

"I won't die, eaten alive," he said. He put a fresh clip in his gun. I'll do you first if you want, or you can do it yourself. Save your bullets, Edward. I lifted a can of gasoline in one hand. What are you planning? he asked. I'm going to set the shed on fire. I splashed gasoline on the door. The smell was sharp and tugged at the back of my throat. With us inside? he asked. Yes. I'd rather shoot myself, if it's all the same to you."

"I know who and what I am. I am The Executioner, and I don't date Vampires. I kill them."

"I could almost smell her fear... Why did it bother me so much? Because she and I were the only women here, and we had to be better than the men. Braver, quicker, whatever. It was a rule for playing with the big boys."

"My eyes were running because there were pieces of zombie all over my toys, Jesus."

"People are supposed to fear the unknown, but ignorance is bliss when the knowledge is so damn frightening."

"Pretend hard enough and maybe it will go away."

"Always needing to have the last word is a bad trait Ms. Blake, pisses people off."

"I stepped out of the car on the rat king's arm, like a trophy wife--except for the wrist sheaths and the two folding knives hidden in my clothing. Somehow I think trophy wives wear more makeup and less cutlery. But, Hey, I haven't met a trophy wife, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe they know what I know, that the true way to a man's heart is six inches of metal between his ribs. Sometimes four inches will do the job, but to be really sure, I like to have six. Funny how phallic objects are always more useful the bigger they are. Anyone who tells you size doesn't matter has been seeing too many small knives."

"We hate most in others what we dislike in ourselves."

"Giving up something that no longer serves a purpose, or protects you, or helps you, isn't giving up at all, it's growing up."

"He wanted to feed the hunger of his skin. The hunger of his body not so much for orgasm but for that need to be held close and tight, that need we all have to press our nakedness against someone else's."

"You ask yourself "What is love? Am I in love?", when what you should be asking is, "What is not love?", ma petite. What is it that this man does for you that is not done out of love?"

"No, really, Ronnie, it's good to share information when you know someone else is dating the lunarly challenged."

"Anita: My life works for me right now, but it wouldn't work for a child. Ronnie: Why, because you don't have a husband? Anita: No, because people try to kill me on a semiregular basis."

"A person likes to think of himself in a certain way, and when something happens that makes that no longer possible, you mourn the old self. The person you thought you were."

"There comes a point when you just love someone. Not because they're good, or bad, or anything really. You just love them. It doesn't mean you'll be together forever. It doesn't mean you won't hurt each other. It just mean you love them. Sometimes in spite of who they are, and sometimes because of who they are. And you know that they love you, sometimes because of who you are, and sometimes in spite of it."

"Nothing helps you sleep at night so much as being absolutely certain that you're right, and everyone else is evil."

"There's no one so self-righteous as someone policing someone else's morality."

"I smiled at him but knew it did not reach my eyes. I smiled because he smiled at me, more reflex than emotion. Inside I was nothing. It was a little like being in shock. Shock is nature's insulation, the thing that shuts you down so you can heal, or sometimes so you can die without hurting, or being afraid..."

"Well I wasn't going to die. You didn't die of a broken heart, it just felt like you were going to. I knew from personal experience that if you just kept moving, acting as if you weren't bleeding inside you didn't die, and eventually you stopped wanting to."

"[Talking to friend Veronica, Anita Blake worries she may be pregnant.] Ronnie: I could ask, who's the father, but that's just creepy. If you are, then it's this little tiny, microscopic lump of cells. It's not a baby. It's not a person, not yet. Anita: We'll have to disagree on that one. Ronnie: You're pro-choice. Anita: Yep, I am, but I also believe that abortion is taking a life. I agree women have the right to choose, but I also think that it's still taking a life. Ronnie: That's like saying you're pro-choice and pro-life. You can't be both. Anita: I'm pro-choice because I've never been a fourteen-year-old incest victim pregnant by her father, or a woman who's going to die if the pregnancy continues, or a rape victim, or even a teenager who made a mistake. I want women to have choices, but I also believe that it's a life, especially once it's big enough to live outside the womb."

"Samuel smiled at me. "Freedom and fairness are very important to you, aren't they?" I nodded, and frowned. "They're important to everybody." He laughed. "Oh, no, Anita, you would be amazed at the number of people who try to give away their freedom at every opportunity. They much prefer that someone else make their decisions.""

"The idea of the feudal system is that the people on the top take care of the needs of those on the bottom, but I have seldom seen it work that way," Wicked said. "Yeah," I said, "it's like trickle-down economics; it only works if the people at the top are really good, decent people. The system is only as good as the people in power."

"Maybe God isn't the sex police, Richard. Sometimes I think Christians get all hung up on the sex thing because it's easier to worry about sex than to ask yourself, am I a good person? If as long as you don't have sex with a lot of people, that's easy. […] It makes it easy to be cruel, because as long as you're not fucking around, nothing you do can be that bad. Is that really all you think of God?"

"That feeling of terrible emptiness when I touched him was like going into a house that you thought would be full of people you loved, only to find it empty, and even the furniture taken. You walk from room to room, hearing your footsteps echo on the naked floors. Your voice bounces back from the empty walls, where the lines of beloved photos still show like the line around a body at a crime scene. He was gone."

"You cannot die of grief, though it feels as if you can. A heart does not actually break, though sometimes your chest aches as if it is breaking. Grief dims with time. It is the way of things. There comes a day when you smile again, and you feel like a traitor. How dare I feel happy. How dare I be glad in a world where my father is no more. And then you cry fresh tears, because you do not miss him as much as you once did, and giving up your grief is another kind of death."

"Love is too precious to be ashamed of."

"A flower may be beautiful all on its own, but a person is never truly beautiful unless someone's eyes show him that he is beautiful."

"After a good, successful torture, she was as happy as I ever saw her. I guess everyone needed a hobby."

"What will exist is a variety of alternative life-styles. Since the population explosion dictates that childbearing be kept to a minimum, parents-and-children will be only one of many "families": couples, age groups, working groups, mixed communes, blood-related clans, class groups, creative groups. Single women will have the right to stay single without ridicule, without the attitudes now betrayed by "spinster" and "bachelor." Lesbians or homosexuals will no longer be denied legally binding marriages, complete with mutual-support agreements and inheritance rights. Paradoxically, the number of homosexuals may get smaller. With fewer over-possessive mothers and fewer fathers who hold up an impossibly cruel or perfectionist idea of manhood, boys will be less likely to be denied or reject their identity as males."

"This is no simple reform. It really is a revolution. Sex and race, because they are easy, visible differences, have been the primary ways of organizing human beings into superior and inferior groups, and into the cheap labor on which this system still depends. We are talking about a society in which there will be no roles other than those chosen, or those earned. We are really talking about humanism."

"Any woman who chooses to behave like a full human being should be warned that the armies of the status quo will treat her as something of a dirty joke. That's their natural and first weapon. She will need her sisterhood."

"I have met brave women who are exploring the outer edge of human possibility, with no history to guide them, and the courage to make themselves vulnerable that I find moving beyond words."

"Erotica is as different from pornography as love is from rape, as dignity is from humiliation, as partnership is from slavery, as pleasure is from pain."

"Blatant or subtle, pornography involves no equal power or mutuality. In fact, much of the tension and drama comes from the clear idea that one person is dominating the other."

"Whatever the gender of the participants, all pornography including male-male gay pornography is an imitation of the male-female, conqueror-victim paradigm, and almost all of it actually portrays or im-plies enslaved women and master."

"In later years, if I'm remembered at all it will be for inventing a phrase like 'reproductive freedom' ... as a phrase it includes the freedom to have children or not to. So it makes it possible for us to make a coalition."

"However sugarcoated and ambiguous, every form of authoritarianism must start with a belief in some group's greater right to power, whether that right is justified by sex, race, class, religion or all four. However far it may expand, the progression inevitably rests on unequal power and airtight roles within the family."

"If the shoe doesn't fit, must we change the foot?"

"As the little boy said when asked if he wanted to be a lawyer like his mother, "Oh no, that's women's work." Logic has nothing to do with oppression."

"Women may be the one group that grows more radical with age."

"The real reasons for genital mutilation can only be understood in the context of the "patriarchy": men must control women's bodies as the means of production, and thus repress the independent power of women's sexuality."

"Law and justice are not always the same. When they aren't, destroying the law may be the first step toward changing it."

"[the] idea that sexuality is only okay if it ends in reproduction oppresses women—whose health de-pends on separating sexuality from reproduction—as well as gay men and lesbians."

"I always wanted to put a sign up on the road to Yale saying, 'Beware: Deconstruction Ahead'. Academics are forced to write in language no one can understand so that they get tenure. They have to say 'discourse', not 'talk'. Knowledge that is not accessible is not helpful. It becomes aerialised—and I think it's important that women's experiences be given a narrative."

"It [abortion] is supposed to make us a bad person. But I must say, I never felt that. I used to sit and try and figure out how old the child would be, trying to make myself feel guilty. But I never could! I think the person who said: 'Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament' was right. Speaking for myself, I knew it was the first time I had taken responsibility for my own life. I wasn't going to let things happen to me. I was going to direct my life, and therefore it felt positive. But still, I didn't tell anyone. Because I knew that out there it wasn't [positive]."

"These patriarchal controls limit men's sexuality too ... That's why men are asked symbolically to submit the sexual part of themselves and their sons to patriarchal authority, which seems to be the origin of male circumcision, a practice that, even as advocates admit, is medically unnecessary 90% of the time. Speaking for myself, I stand with many brothers in eliminating that practice too."

"I think the fact that I've become a symbol for the women's movement is somewhat accidental. A woman member of Congress, for example, might be identified as a member of Congress; it doesn't mean she's any less of a feminist but she's identified by her nearest male analog. Well, I don't have a male analog so the press has to identify me with the movement. I suppose I could be referred to as a journalist, but because Ms. is part of a movement and not just a typical magazine, I'm more likely to be identified with the movement. There's no other slot to put me in."

"A man can be called assertive if he launches World War Three. A woman can be called assertive if she puts you on hold."

"I’ve learned from these events that self-esteem plays as much a part in the destiny of nations as it does in the lives of individuals; that self-hatred leads to the need either to dominate or to be dominated; that citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform their countries; in short, that self-esteem is the basis of any real democracy."

"I think we each come out of the womb with some unique way of looking at the world and if we don't express it, we loose faith in ourselves."

"Like the spider spinning its web, we create much of the outer world from within ourselves. The universe is a joint product of the observer and the observed."

"Citizens who refuse to obey anything but their own conscience can transform countries, it is the basis of any real democracy."

"Artists strive to free this true and spontaneous self in their work. Creativity, meditation are ways of freeing an inner voice"

"Like art, revolutions come from combining what exists into what has never existed before."

"God may be in the details, but the goddess is in the questions. Once we begin to ask them, there's no turning back."

"I'm not sure feminism should require an adjective. Believing in the full social, political, and economic quality of women, which is what the dictionary says "feminism" means, is enough to make a revolution in itself. But if I had to choose only one adjective, I still would opt for radical feminist. I know patriarchs keep equating that word with violent or man-hating, crazy or extremist — though being a plain vanilla feminist doesn't keep one safe from such epithets either, nor does "I'm not a feminist, but ..." Nonetheless, radical seems an honest indication of the fundamental change we have in mind and says what probably is the case: the false division of human nature into “feminine” and “masculine” is the root of all other divisions into subject and object, active and passive — the beginning of hierarchy."

"Basically, I feel different from most other women. I feel I don’t have to put on an act. If I’m not feminine enough for someone, I don’t care, because femininity is different in everyone’s mind."

"Gender is the remaining caste system that still cuts deep enough, and spreads wide enough, to be confused with the laws of nature. To uncover the difference between what is and what could be, we may need the “Aha!” that comes from exchanging subject for object, the flash of recognition that starts with a smile, the moment of changed viewpoint that turns the world upside down."

"...a lot of people in this country have had the courage to raise their daughters more like their sons. ... But there are many fewer people who have had the courage to raise their sons more like their daughters."

"I always thought that "humanist" was a good word long before I understood that anyone thought it was a bad word. It seems to me that it means you believe in the great potential and the best of human beings, so I didn’t have to overcome anything to accept this award; it seemed an unmitigated honor. And since the ultra-right wing has tried so hard to make it a bad word— “humanist” has been demonized in much the same way that the word “feminist” has — it seemed especially important to identify as humanist and support humanist groups."

"It doesn’t surprise me to learn that there is bias and sexism everywhere, just like there are problems of racism and homophobia stemming from the whole notion that we’re arranged in a hierarchy, that we’re ranked rather than linked. I think we’ve learned that we have to contend with these divisions everywhere."

"The men I’ve met who were the best allies of feminism are those who see their stake in it; who see that they themselves are being limited by a culture that deprives men of human qualities deemed feminine, which are actually just the qualities necessary to raise kids — empathy and attention to detail and patience. Men have those qualities too but they’re not encouraged to develop them. And so they miss out on raising their kids, and they actually shorten their own lives. When men realize that feminism is a universal good that affects them in very intimate ways then I think they really become allies and leaders."

"Regarding the idea that the women’s movement is white and middle class — a fair share of the country is white and middle class. And certainly, there are racist white women. Certainly, there are sexist black men. All those things are true. But the other thing that’s never said is that black women are much more likely to support feminist issues than white women. It makes sense because they’re much more likely to be on the paid labor force than white women. And if you’ve experienced discrimination for one reason, you’re probably more likely to recognize it for another reason."

"If you think about Martin Luther King and others in the leadership of the Civil Rights movement, they were all college-educated, middle class people. Nobody tries to diminish the Civil Rights movement by saying they were middle class. It’s true that the National Organization for Women in its early years was white middle class. But once it was joined by younger women from civil rights groups like SNCC (Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee) it changed profoundly. In any case, my life’s ambition is to make white women as smart as black women. Because the group of women who still vote against their own self-interest are white married women."

"I was perversely delighted to see the Catholic Church and the Vatican go after nuns because I think they made a major error. People are quite clear in viewing nuns as the servants and the teachers and the supporters of the poor. You contrast that with the fact that the Vatican did virtually nothing about long-known pedophiles, and it’s just too much. Their stance on abortion is also quite dishonest historically, because as the Jesuits (who always seem to be more honest historians of the Catholic Church) point out, the Church approved of and even regulated abortion well into the mid-1800s. The whole question of ensoulment was determined by the date of baptism. But after the Napoleonic Wars there weren’t enough soldiers anymore and the French were quite sophisticated about contraception. So Napoleon III prevailed on Pope Pius IX to declare abortion a mortal sin, in return for which Pope Pius IX got all the teaching positions in the French schools and support for the doctrine of papal infallibility. … My favorite line belongs to an old Irish woman taxi driver in Boston. Flo Kennedy and I were in the backseat talking about Flo’s book, Abortion Rap (1971), and the driver turned around and said, “Honey, if men could get pregnant, abortion would be a sacrament.” I wish I’d gotten her name so we could attribute it to her."

"This war against women started a long time ago with old Democrats who took over the Republican Party, which was, before that, the very first to support the Equal Rights Amendment. Even when the National Women’s Political Caucus started, there was a whole Republican feminist entity. But beginning with the Civil Rights Act of 1964, right-wing Democrats like Jesse Helms began to leave the Democratic Party and gradually take over the GOP. So I always feel I have to apologize to my friends who are Republicans because they’ve basically lost their party. Ronald Reagan couldn’t get nominated today because he was supportive of immigrant rights. Barry Goldwater was pro-choice. George H.W. Bush supported Planned Parenthood. No previous Republicans except for George W. Bush would be acceptable to the people who now run the GOP. They are not Republicans. They are the American version of the Taliban. … They’ve taken over one of our two great parties. This causes people to wrongly think that the country is equally divided but if we look at the public opinion polls, it isn’t. So, I can’t think of anything more crucial than real Republicans taking back the GOP."

"I think feminists and progressive Democrats err when they accusingly say to Republican women, “How can you be a Republican?” Nobody responds to that. But if you say, “Look, you didn’t leave your party. The party left you. Let’s just look at the issues and see what they are and forget about party labels and vote for ourselves,” I think people would really respond."

"If someone wants to be called a sex worker, I call them a sex worker. But there is a problem with that term, because while it was adopted in goodwill, traffickers have taken it and essentially said, “Okay, if it’s work like any other, somebody has to do it.” In Nevada, there was a time when you couldn’t get unemployment unless you tried sex work first. The same was true in Germany. So the state became a procurer because of the argument that sex is work like any other. This is not a good thing. I also do not feel proud when I stand in the Sonagachi, the biggest brothel area in all of South Asia. It’s in Kolkata, and everything is written in Bengali except “SEX WORK.” And the term is used in various sinister ways by sex traffickers, who even describe what they do — which is to kidnap or buy people out of villages — as “facilitated migration.” I’ve only ever met one woman who actually was a prostitute of her own free will. She didn’t have a pimp. She could pick and choose her customers. That’s so rare. So we have to look at the reality and not romanticize it. We have to be clear that you have the right to sell your own body but nobody has the right to sell anybody else’s body. No one has that right."

"The Arab Spring did a great deal for women because the person who spread the word in the first place was a woman. Women participated in it; they were fully out there in the street. Nawal El Saadawi is a founding figure of Egyptian and Middle Eastern feminism who wrote a book opposing female genital mutilation (of which she is a victim). She’s been banned. She’s been in prison. She’s now in her eighties and during the Arab Spring she was like the wise woman of Liberation Square, sitting in the middle of it as young women and young men came to her for instruction, for blessings, and so on. But it’s very often the case with revolutionary moments that women are present but then they’re drummed out of it afterwards."

"I think most social justice movements take the words that are used against them and make them good words. That’s partly how “black” came back into usage. Before we said “colored person,” or “Negro.” Then came “Black Power,” “Black Pride,” and “Black Is Beautiful” to make it a good word. "Witch" was another word I remember reclaiming in the 1970s. There was a group called Women’s International Terrorist Conspiracy from Hell (WITCH). They all went down to Wall Street and hexed it. And Wall Street fell five points the next day; it was quite amazing! “Queer” and “gay” are other examples. … I think we all have the power to name ourselves. I try to call people what it is they wish to be called. But we can take the sting out of epithets and bad words by using them. Actually, I had done that earlier with “slut” because when I went back to Toledo, Ohio, which is where I was in high school and junior high school, I was on a radio show with a bunch of women. A man called up and called me “a slut from East Toledo,” which is doubly insulting because East Toledo is the wrong side of town. I thought, when I’d lived here I would have been devastated by this. But by this time I thought, you know, that’s a pretty good thing to be. I’m putting it on my tombstone: "Here lies the slut from East Toledo.""

"There were never that many women stand-up comics in the past because the power to make people laugh is also a power that gets people upset. But the ones who were performing were making jokes on themselves usually and now that’s changed. So there are no rules exactly but I think if you see a whole group of people only being self-deprecating, it’s a problem. But I have always employed humor, and I think it’s absolutely crucial that we do because, among other things, humor is the only free emotion. I mean, you can compel fear, as we know. You can compel love, actually, if somebody is isolated and dependent — it’s like the Stockholm syndrome. But you can’t compel laughter. It happens when two things come together and make a third unexpectedly. It happens when you learn something, too. I think it was Einstein who said he had to be careful when he shaved because if he thought of something suddenly, he’d laugh and cut himself. So I think laughter is crucial. Some of the original cultures, like the Dalit and the Native American, don’t separate laughter and seriousness. There’s none of this kind of false Episcopalian solemnity."

"If it were up to me, I would not define myself by the absence of something; "theist" is a believer, so with "atheist" you’re defining yourself by the absence of something. I think human beings work on yes, not on no. … humanist is a great term. …except that humanism sometimes is not seen as inclusive of spirituality. To me, spirituality is the opposite of religion. It’s the belief that all living things share some value. So I would include the word spiritual just because it feels more inclusive to me. Native Americans do this when they offer thanks to Mother Earth and praise the interconnectedness of “the two-legged and the four, the feathered and the clawed,” and so on. It’s lovely. … because it’s not about not believing. It’s about rejecting a god who looks like the ruling class."

"I like to say that the last five-to-ten thousand years has been an experiment that failed and it’s now time to declare the first meeting of the post-patriarchal, post-racist, post-nationalist age. So let’s add “post-theological.” Why not?"

""You're always the person you were when you were born," she says impatiently. "You just keep finding new ways to express it."

"You should write about take no-shit women like me. Girls need to know they can break the rules"

"I myself cried when I got angry, then became unable to explain why I was angry in the first place. Later I would discover this was endemic among female human beings. Anger is supposed to be "unfeminine" so we suppress it -until it overflows. I could see that not speaking up made my mother feel worse. This was my first hint of the truism that depression is anger turned inward; thus women are twice as likely to be depressed. My mother paid a high price for caring so much, yet being able to do so little about it. In this way, she led me toward am activist place where she herself could never go."

"Voting isn't the most we can do, but it is the least."

"A woman needs a man like a fish needs a bicycle."

"Housewives are dependent creatures who are still children... parasites."

"In the early seventies, when I was in jail, one of the organizers of the National United Committee to Free Angela Davis told me that they had approached a feminist organization-I do not remember which one-and the response was, "Well, Angela Davis is not associated with the women's movement, she's associated with the Black movement, as if one had to make a choice between the two, as if one was either a feminist or an antiracist. In all fairness, I should point out that white feminists were active around my case. Gloria Steinem, for example, was treasurer of my legal defense fund. There has been a great deal of dialogue about the influence of racism and class bias in the women's movement."

"Jung drew a circle and divided it into four parts, and said a man is three-quarters masculine and one quarter feminine. A woman is three-quarters feminine and one quarter masculine. And that’s a good start. The problem is that he says this is the way it should be, and that’s not the way it is. It is too rigid a form. Some men I have met are three-quarters feminine and one-quarter masculine, and the one-quarter masculine they are — jump back — very strong, fuerte, strong! But they have tremendous feminine development because it is who they are. It is from the souls, not an overlay from cultural family. Gloria Steinem is a great example of a woman who has far more masculine development then she has feminine development. Although now her feminine development appears as though it is coming now. She is 55 -60 years old and now it is coming. So whatever we have, as you know, the role in life is to develop it to its fullness. But also the challenges is to develop its balance, which is also its opposite."

"Even the kind of feminist women that I know, we’ve had great discussions here about reproductive rights. Our primary issue, as women and men who are our allies in the struggle, is not the right to have abortion, it is to have reproductive rights, of which abortion is one. I often have this discussion with my good comrade Gloria Steinem—I’ve not convinced her. I’ve said, “Do you really believe that women in the world who are just trying to get clean water and feed their children and to survive, are running around being upset that they can’t have an abortion?” This is a very small example of how First World women in our society, mostly white, can impose our sense of what is important for women in the world. As such, that is a form of violence. Because we are not respecting the lives of the millions of women in the world for whom feminist issue is ending war, having food, ending poverty, ending disease."

"Gloria Steinem inspired me."

"At first, the editors there said they didn’t want staff writers but that if I had an idea for a piece they’d look at it. So I went home and called up Ms. magazine, and I said, “I’d like to speak to Gloria Steinem.” She picked up, and I told her I’d like to interview her. She said, “Of course.” I was just somebody off the street, but that was the original solidarity of feminism."

"If we adopt Gloria Steinem's definition of a feminist — "Anyone who recognizes the equality and full humanity of women and men" — most of us are probably feminists, too. This was a radical innovation two thousand years ago, when the first Christians proclaimed the equal value of all people."

"I don't know that my quarrel is with Western feminism as such, but with the mouthy American feminists of the early and mid-seventies. Particularly Gloria Steinem and the Ms. magazine group, who were doctrinaire and, we now know, often conducting intergender relationships and maneuvering for power when they had an overt but totally unacknowledged racist, colonialist attitude towards women of color. Particularly women of color who were not African American. And so the Kate Millets and the Gloria Steinems insisted on telling minority women, telling me, how I should conduct my life in order to be a feminist. It was all about talk, rhetoric, and self-examination-these were the times of consciousness-raising groups and examining yourself with mirrors"

"When was the last time you heard Gloria Steinem or Betty Friedan talk about welfare rights?"

"She is so deluded that she genuinely believes she speaks for all women. She's a victim of her own success. I liked the early Steinem. There was once a survey conducted for Time about who would make a good candidate for the first female president, and I wrote in Gloria Steinem. But now? Gloria Steinem is dissing men and dissing fashion and she's out having her hair streaked at Kenneth's. She became a socialite with a coterie. A lot of middle-aged white ladies still love her, but the media have been negligent regarding her."

"The horrible truth is that the feminist establishment in the U.S., led by Gloria Steinem, did in fact apply a double standard to Bill Clinton’s behavior because he was a Democrat. The Democratic president and administration supported abortion rights, and therefore it didn’t matter what his personal behavior was. [...] The actual facts of the matter are that Bill Clinton was a serial abuser of working-class women–he had exploited that power differential even in Arkansas."

"I suppose everyone continues to be interested in the quest for the self, but what you feel when you’re older, I think, is that — how to express this — you really must make the self. It's absolutely useless to look for it, you won’t find it, but it’s possible in some sense to make it."

"I combine concrete cynicism with a sort of vague optimism."

"Europeans used to say Americans were puritanical. Then they discovered that we were not puritans. So now they say that we are obsessed with sex."

"I am putting real plums into an imaginary cake."

"I'm afraid I'm not sufficiently inhibited about the things that other women are inhibited about for me. They feel that you've given away trade secrets."

"In politics, it seems, retreat is honorable if dictated by military considerations and shameful if even suggested for ethical reasons."

"Every word she writes is a lie, including and and the."

"To be disesteemed by people you don’t have much respect for is not the worst fate."

"She could not bear to hurt her husband. She impressed this on the Young Man, on her confidantes, and finally on her husband himself. The thought of Telling Him actually made her heart turn over in a sudden and sickening way, she said. This was true, and yet she knew that being a potential divorcee was deeply pleasurable in somewhat the same way that being an engaged girl had been."

"You know what my favourite quotation is? […] It’s from Chaucer […] Criseyde says it, "I am myne owene woman, wel at ese.""

"He had the true American taste for argument, argument as distinguished from conversation on the one hand and from oratory on the other. The long-drawn-out, meandering debate was, perhaps, the only art form he understood or relished, and this was natural since the argument is in a sense our only indigenous folk-art, and it is not the poet but the silver-tongued lawyer who is our real national bard."

"When we pass from "I ought to do this" to "You think I ought to do this," it seems to us at first that we have weakened the imperative; actually, by externalizing it, we have made it unanswerable, for it is only ourselves that we can come to terms with."

"[H]e was now confronted with what he imagined to be a general, undiscriminating hostility, a spirit of criticism embodied in the girl that was capricious, feminine, and absolutely inscrutable, so that he went about feeling continually guilty without knowing just what it was he had done. It haunted him that if he could anticipate every objection, he would be safe, but there was no telling what this strange girl might find fault with, and the very limitation of his knowledge of her made the number of possible objections limitless."

"If only one could … But it required strength. The romantic life had been too hard for her. In morals as in politics anarchy is not for the weak. The small state, racked by internal dissension, invites the foreign conqueror. Proscription, martial law, the billeting of the rude troops, the tax collector, the unjust judge, anything, anything at all, is sweeter than responsibility. The dictator is also the scapegoat; in assuming absolute authority, he assumes absolute guilt; and the oppressed masses, groaning under the yoke, know themselves to be innocent as lambs, while they pray hypocritically for deliverance."

"I still know when I lie, I can recognize a frame-up when I make one. But Frederick is his own stooge, his own innocent front. He has a vested interest in himself. He is the perfect Protestant pragmatist. 'If I say this, it is true,' 'If I do this, it is justified.' There is no possibility of dispute because Frederick has grace, Frederick belongs to the Elect. It's the religion of the Pharisee, the religion of the businessman."

"[H]e came quickly to believe that the modern was some sort of duty laid on every man who had heard its call, a system of knowledge and perception equivalent to revealed religion — and for all those born too early to receive its message, for Raphael and Shakespeare, he felt a kind of pity like that of the pious Christian for the deprived souls of the ancients, who died too soon to get the benefits of the Redemption."

"The discovery that one cannot convince an opponent and that it is hopeless to go on trying involves a confession of subjectivity that deprives the world of meaning."

"Morality did not keep well; it required stable conditions; it was costly; it was subject to variations, and the market for it was uncertain."

"When Henry Mulcahy, a middle-aged instructor of literature at Jocelyn College, Jocelyn, Pennsylvania, unfolded the President's letter and became aware of its contents, he gave a sudden sharp cry of impatience and irritation, as if such interruptions could positively be brooked no longer."

"What disturbed the advocates of the dances most profoundly was the discovery of a fathomless paradox at the bottom of their friends' thinking: in following the crowd, against their own will and judgment, they were following themselves, i.e., nobody."

"For all his derogation, he truly believed in the modern, as subversive of established values, a mine or fuse laid under the terrain of the virtuous; the words, modern, secular, experimental, were drawled out by him in a seductive, blandishing tone, like a veiled erotic invitation."

"Humanly speaking, of course, she and Alma had the same right as anybody else to interfere in what was none of their business, the duty, in fact, of the bystander to interfere between father and son, employer and employee, state and subject, to protect elementary human rights and secure fair treatment for the weaker. Yet today's fashion was to disguise this moral feeling in an expedient garb, […] to 'sell' a moral argument in terms of a higher utility."

"I learned long ago," she stoutly reiterated, "that one can't bargain in these affairs. If one wants to be effective, one hands in one's resignation and clears out. There's no other way for a man or an institution to learn that one is serious than to learn it too late."

"A spasm of irritation shook him. He could not determine where their machinations ended and his own over-active intelligence began the work of conjecture — it was the old philosophical stickler: how to distinguish the mind's knowledge of its objects from its experience of its own processes? In short, can we know anything, he muttered under his breath."

"It was Domna's frailty, as a young and egoistic person, to experience in a heightened way a common subjective illusion, which was that her own life was free, determined only by voluntary choices, while the lives of other people around her were subject to harsh necessity."

"Furness […] patently believed in nothing, not even in himself, nothing, that is, but the amusing warp-and-woof of events and persons."

"Loyalty to a side, he said, had been instilled in him by his southern mother, but he now thought you had to be loyal to all sides, to the truth as you saw it, which, when you came down to it, meant being loyal to yourself."

"[A]ll moral values, to the analyst, were just rationalizations: ego massage."

"This refusal to listen was a form of stupidity that Martha especially abhorred, and she considered Miles well punished for it. If he had ever taken seriously her passionate desire to leave him, she might not (she now believed) have been driven in practice to show him how little indeed he knew. To pay attention, for Martha, was the prime human virtue; without it, there could be no dignity and no reciprocity."

""But what about church attendance figures?" ventured Harriet. "Aren't modern people supposed to be feeling a lack in their lives that they need religion to fill?" Martha shrugged. "An advertising gambit," she said. "First you convince people that they lack something and then you send them a product to remedy it. People 'need' religion to 'deepen their awareness' or give them 'tragic irony' — the way I 'need' a facial cream to make my life more glamorous." […] "But if there is a lack, Martha?" said Dolly. "Then it ought not to be filled," said Martha. "If it's a real lack, it's a necessary hollow in life that can't be stuffed up, like a chicken. Insufficiency. Shortcoming. I don't need God as a measure to feel that. Do you, Dolly?" "God, no!" said Dolly."

"Nobody can stay in the right — I mean in real life — that's the terrible thing, Warren. If you think you're in the right for more than a few seconds, you'll find that you're in the wrong. Nobody can have a permanent claim on being the injured party; it seems horribly unfair, but there it is. As soon as you feel injured and begin to cry for justice, you discover that your position has gotten undermined; the ground has shifted beneath you, in a slow sort of landslide, and you find yourself cut off."

"[P]ity was very unreliable, as a guide to conduct. It signified a conquered repugnance."

"She felt as though she were present, against her will, at an interminable discussion […] with captious voices pleading, "Explain to me, why not? Give me one reason why not." The medieval temptations, with all the allures of gluttony and concupiscence could not, Martha thought, have been half so trying as the sheer dentist-drill boredom of listening to the arguments of the devil as a modern quasi-intellectual."

"You act as if the human race had learned nothing, as if everything were possible, as if we could all start on a new phase every day. Or a new wife. It's all the same. You take up a doubting posture. But you don't really doubt. You just ask questions, like a machine." Her voice rose, in slight hysteria. Warren looked at her in consternation. "Forgive me," she put in. "But it's true. And the whole world is getting like you, like New Leeds. Everybody has to be shown. 'How do you know that?' every moron asks the philosopher when he is told that this is an apple and that is a pear. He pretends to doubt, to be curious. But nobody is really curious because nobody cares what the truth is. As soon as we think something, it occurs to us that the opposite or the contrary might just as well be true. And no one cares."

"The rationalist mind has always had its doubts about Venice. The watery city receives a dry inspection, as though it were a myth for the credulous — poets and honeymooners."

"Among Venice's spells is one of peculiar potency: the power to awaken the philistine dozing in the skeptic's breast. People of this kind — dry, prose people of superior intelligence — object to feeling what they are supposed to feel, in the presence of marvels. They wish to feel something else. The extreme of this position is to feel nothing."

"Sophistication, that modern kind of sophistication that begs to differ, to be paradoxical, to invert, is not a possible attitude in Venice. In time, this becomes the beauty of the place. One gives up the struggle and submits to a classic experience. One accepts the fact that what one is about to feel or say has not only been said before by Goethe or Musset but is on the tip of the tongue of the tourist from Iowa who is alighting in the Piazzetta with his wife in her furpiece and jeweled pin. Those Others, the existential enemy, are here identical with oneself."

"The Florentines, who were incapable of ruling themselves, produced a great theorist of government: Machiavelli. The Venetians had no theorists and evolved a model Republic."

"The Venetians invented the income tax, statistical science, the floating of government stock, state censorship of books, anonymous denunciations (the Bocca del Leone), the gambling casino, and the Ghetto."

"St Mary of Egypt […] has, by the way, two qualifications for being a Venetian saint — first, she was a courtesan, and, second, when she died, her remains were buried by a pious lion."

"Casanova had the true Venetian temperament: cool, ebullient, and licentious. […] This absence of passion no doubt contributes to the unreal character of Venetian life, which appears as a shimmering surface, like Venetian music. In the traditional Venetian serenades, played from cruising gondolas, the songs today are all Neapolitan. Foreigners cavil at this, but the Venetians point out that there are no love songs in the Venetian repertory — only witty exchanges between man and maiden."

"When I go it will have to be by gondola because I have so much baggage. Some private Charon of the signora's will ferry me down to the station in his shabby funeral bark. That is how the Allies took Venice, arriving from the mainland, at the end of the second World War. There was a petrol shortage, and the Allied command, having made secret contact with the gondoliers' co-operative, officially 'captured' Venice with a fleet of gondolas. Even war in Venice evokes a disbelieving smile."

"From what I have seen, I am driven to the conclusion that religion is only good for good people, and I do not mean this as a paradox, but simply as an observable fact. Only good people can afford to be religious. For the others it is too great a temptation — a temptation to the deadly sins of pride and anger, chiefly, but one might also add sloth."

"To care for the quarrels of the past, to identify oneself passionately with a cause that became, politically speaking, a losing cause with the birth of the modern world, is to experience a kind of straining against reality, a rebellious nonconformity that, again, is rare in America, where children are instructed in the virtues of the system they live under, as though history had achieved a happy ending in American civics."

"I do not mind if I lose my soul for all eternity. If the kind of God exists Who would damn me for not working out a deal with Him, then that is unfortunate. I should not care to spend eternity in the company of such a person."

"Combativeness was, I suppose, the dominant trait in my grandmother’s nature. An aggressive churchgoer, she was quite without Christian feeling; the mercy of the Lord Jesus had never entered her heart. Her piety was an act of war against the Protestant ascendancy […] articles attacking birth control, divorce, mixed marriages, Darwin and secular education were her favourite reading. The teachings of the Church did not interest her, except as they were a rebuke to others […] The extermination of Protestantism, rather than spiritual perfection, was the boon she prayed for."

"The American, if he has a spark of national feeling, will be humiliated by the very prospect of a foreigner's visit to Congress — these, for the most part, illiterate hacks whose fancy vests are spotted with gravy, and whose speeches, hypocritical, unctuous and slovenly, are spotted also with the gravy of political patronage, these persons are a reflection on the democratic process rather than of it; they expose it in its underwear."

"We are a nation of twenty million bathrooms, with a humanist in every tub."

"The American character looks always as if it had just had a rather bad haircut, which gives it, in our eyes at any rate, a greater humanity than the European, which even among its beggars has an all too professional air."

"Life for the European is a career; for the American, it is a hazard."

"The immense popularity of American movies abroad demonstrates that Europe is the unfinished negative of which America is the proof."

"The Crucifixion and other historical precedents notwithstanding, many of us still believe that outstanding goodness is a kind of armor, that virtue, seen plain and bare, gives pause to criminality. But perhaps it is the other way around."

"Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior."

"People with bad consciences always fear the judgment of children."

"[T]he whole concept of transcendence […] was very close to my heart, the concept that man is more than his circumstances, more even than himself."

"Every age has a keyhole to which its eye is pasted."

"Is it really so difficult to tell a good action from a bad one? I think one usually knows right away or a moment afterward, in a horrid flash of regret."

"For me, in fact, the mark of the historic is the nonchalance with which it picks up an individual and deposits him in a trend, like a house playfully moved in a tornado."

"An unrectified case of injustice has a terrible way of lingering, restlessly, in the social atmosphere like an unfinished equation."

"People sometimes say that they envied the Communists because they were so "sure." In my case this was not exactly it; I was sure, too, intellectually speaking, as far as I went. That is, I had a clear mind and was reasonably honest, while many of the Communists I knew were pathetically fogged up. In any case, my soul was not particularly hot for certainties."

"I could not, I saw, be a Communist because I was not "made that way." Hence, to be a Communist was to possess a sort of privilege. And this privilege, like all privileges, appeared to be a source of power. Any form of idiocy or aberration can confer this distinction on its owner, at least in our age, which aspires to a "total" experience."

"Our anti-Communism came to us neither as the fruit of a special wisdom nor as a humiliating awakening from a prolonged deception, but as a natural event, the product of chance and propinquity. One thing followed another, and the will had little to say about it. For my part, during that year, I realized, with a certain wistfulness, that it was too late for me to become any kind of Marxist. Marxism, I saw, from the learned young man I listened to at Committee meetings, was something you had to take up young, like ballet dancing."

"[T]he labor of keeping house is labor in its most naked state, for labor is toil that never finishes, toil that has to be begun again the moment it is completed, toil that is destroyed and consumed by the life process."

"[B]ureaucracy, the rule of no one, has become the modern form of despotism."

"The theater is the only branch of art much cared for by people of wealth; like canasta, it does away with the bother of talk after dinner."

"A society person who is enthusiastic about modern painting or Truman Capote is already half a traitor to his class. It is middle-class people who, quite mistakenly, imagine that a lively pursuit of the latest in reading and painting will advance their status in the world."

"To allude negligently to Kafka, Yeats, Proust, Stendhal, or St. John of the Cross in a tone of of-course-you-know-them is canonical for Mademoiselle contributors, whatever the topic in hand."

"As an instrument of mass snobbery, this remarkable magazine [Flair], dedicated simply to the personal cult of its editress, to the fetishism of the flower (Fleur Cowles, Flair, a single rose), outdistances all its competitors in the audacity of its conception. It is a leap into the Orwellian future, a magazine without content or point of view beyond its proclamation of itself, one hundred and twenty pages of sheer presentation, a journalistic mirage. […] The articles, in fact, seem meant not to be read but inhaled like a whiff of scent from the mystic rose at the center (flair, through Old French, from fragrare, to emit an odor: an instinctive power of discriminating or discerning). Nobody, one imagines, has read them, not even their authors: grammatical sentences are arranged around a vanishing point of meaning."

"The essence of Vassar is mythic. Today, despite much competition, it still figures in the public mind as the archetypal woman's college. […] It signifies a certain je ne sais quoi; a whiff of luxury and the ineffable; plain thinking and high living. […] For different people, in fact, at different periods, Vassar can stand for whatever is felt to be wrong with the modern female: humanism, atheism, Communism, short skirts, cigarettes, psychiatry, votes for women, free love, intellectualism. Pre-eminently among American college women, the Vassar girl is thought of as carrying a banner. The inscription on it varies with the era or with the ideas of the beholder and in the final sense does not matter — the flushed cheek and tensed arm are what count."

"A wistful respect for the unorthodox is engrained in the Vassar mentality. The Vassar freshman still comes through Taylor Gate as I did, with the hope of being made over, redirected, vivified. The daughter of a conservative lawyer, doctor, banker, or businessman, she will have chosen Vassar in all probability with the idea of transcending her background. And if she does not have such ideas for herself, her teachers have them for her. […] This dynamic conception of education is Vassar's trademark."

"[I]n science, all facts, no matter how trivial or banal, enjoy democratic equality."

"In violence, we forget who we are."

"As subjects, we all live in suspense, from day to day, from hour to hour; in other words, we are the hero of our own story."

"If someone tells you he is going to make "a realistic decision," you immediately understand that he has resolved to do something bad."

"It was June, 1933, one week after Commencement, when Kay Leiland Strong, Vassar '33, the first of her class to run around the table at the Class Day dinner, was married to Harald Petersen, Reed '27, in the chapel of St. George's Church, P.E., Karl F. Reiland, Rector."

"Thin women are more sensual; scientific fact — the nerve ends are closer to the surface."

"You mustn't force sex to do the work of love or love to do the work of sex."

"[Y]ou have to live without love, learn not to need it, in order to live with it."

"Extend your antennae, girls."

"Her [Helena's] light, mildly aseptic irony was wasted on Norine, who was unaware of irony and humorous vocal shadings; she listened only to the overt content of what was said and drew her own blunt inferences."

"All I knew that night was that I believed in something and couldn't express it, while your team believed in nothing but knew how to say it — in other men's words. Of course I envied you that too."

"It struck her that Norine's apartment was all too populous with 'significant form.' Every item in it seemed to be saying something, asserting something, pontificating. Norine and Put were surrounded by articles of belief, down to the last can of evaporated milk and the single, monastic pillow on the double bed. It was different from Kay's apartment, where the furniture was only asking to be admired ot talked about. But here, in this dogmatic lair, nothing had been admitted that did not make a 'relevant statement,' though what the polar bear was saying Helena could not make out."

"'That was your day, Mother,' Dottie said patiently. 'Sacrifices aren't necessary any more. […] I've thought about this a lot, out West. Sacrifice is a dated idea. A superstition, really, Mother, like burning widows in India. What society is aiming at now is the full development of the individual.'"

"One of the big features of living alone was that you could talk to yourself all you wanted and address imaginary audiences, running the gamut of emotion."

"There was a side of Sloan, she [Priss] had decided, that she mistrusted, a side that could be summed up by saying that he was a Republican. Up to now this had not mattered; most men she knew were Republicans — it was almost part of being a man. But she did not like the thought of a Republican controlling the destiny of a helpless baby. In medicine, Sloan was quite forward-looking, but he was enamored of his own theories, which he wanted to enforce, like Prohibition, regardless of the human factor."

"She decided she wanted a cool, starchy independent life, with ruffles of humor like window curtains."

"He would only come if she were unprepared. Or would he come only if she were prepared? With her lamp trimmed like the wise virgins? Christianity would tell her to buy food for two, but the pagans would say, 'Don't risk it.'"

"She [Polly] did not approve of revolutions, unless they were absolutely necessary, and she thought it peculiar, to say the least, that her father and his friends were eager to make revolutions in democratic countries like France or the United States instead of concentrating on Hitler and Mussolini, who ought to be overthrown. Of course, as her father said, it was pretty hopeless to make a revolution against Hitler for the time being, since the workers' parties had all been suppressed; still, it seemed rather unfair to penalize Roosevelt and Blum for not being Hitler. Fair play, replied her father, was a bourgeois concept and did not apply against the class enemy."

"It struck her that becoming a Trotskyite had merely given him one more thing to be snobbish about. He now looked down his nose at Stalinists, progressives, and New Dealers, as well as on the middle class and the 'moneyed elements,' whom he had always derided. Some of his worst prejudices, she told him, scolding, were being reinforced by his new adherence. For example, coming from Massachusetts, he had a plaintive aversion to the Irish, and he was elated to hear that Marx had called the Irish the bribed tools of imperialism. 'Look at that bribed tool of imperialism!' he would whisper, of the poor policeman on the beat."

"Polly saw the point. Would she wish not to have been born? Unhappy as she was, she could not say that. Even when she had wished to die, she had not wished never to have been born. Nobody alive could do that."

"As Socrates showed, love cannot be anything else but the love of the good. But to find the good is very rare. That is why love is rare, in spite of what people think. It happens to one in a thousand, and to that one it is a revelation. No wonder he cannot communicate with the other nine hundred and ninety-nine."

"[Norine:] 'Do you know that the Vassar graduate has only 2.2 children?' Priss was aware of this statistic, which had caused concern in alumnae circles — Vassar women were barely replacing themselves while the rest of the population was multiplying."

"'You still believe in progress,' she said kindly. 'I'd forgotten there were people who did. It's your substitute for religion. Your tribal totem is the yardstick. But we've transcended all that. No first-rate mind can accept the concept of progress any more.'"

"She did not recommend sacrifice, having meekly given up her job and her social ideals for Sloan's sake. It was now too late, because of Stephen, but she was convinced she had made a mistake. Sloan would be far happier if she were where she longed to be — in Washington as a humble cog in the New Deal, which he hated — and he could boast of 'my Bolshevik wife.' He had been proud of her when she was with the N.R.A., because she had had gumption, and now even that was gone."

"They got into the car. This time Lakey drove. Listening to Harald's wild talk had disgusted her; she concluded that he was utterly specious. She was ashamed of the curiosity she had felt about him. To be curious about someone opened you to contamination from them. But she was still determined to play him a trick, to take revenge for Kay, for women, and most of all for the impudence of his associating himself with her."

"'Let me out!' 'You want to get out of the car?' said Lakey. 'Yes,' said Harald. 'You bury her. You and the "group."' Lakey stopped the car. He got out. She drove on, following the cortège, watching him in the rear-view mirror as he crossed the road and stood, thumbing a ride, while cars full of returning mourners glided past him, back to New York."

"Calling someone a monster does not make him more guilty; it makes him less so by classing him with beasts and devils (“a person of inhuman and horrible cruelty or wickedness,” OED, Sense 4). Such an unnatural being is more horrible to contemplate than an Eichmann — that is, aesthetically worse — but morally an Ilse Koch was surely less culpable than Eichmann since she seems to have had no trace of human feeling and therefore was impassable to conscience."

"Judas was not a monster, though his act was monstrous; he was a man, the twelfth part of humanity, and his sin was that he could betray for thirty pieces of silver, like any common informer. Jesus was uncommon, not Judas."

"To be a child is something one learns, as one learns the names of rivers or the kings of France. Childhood, for a child, is a sort of falseness, woodenness, stoniness, a lesson recited. Many children are aware of this — that is, aware of being children as a special, prosy condition: "We can't do that! We're children!" Playing children is a long boring game with occasional exciting moments."

"As happens with sports and hobbies, his enjoyment was solemnized by expertise, the rites of comparing, collating, a half-deliberate parody of scholarship like the recitation of batting averages."

"Peter, a philosophy minor, was an adept of the Kantian ethic; he had pledged himself never to treat anyone as a means ('The Other is always an End: thy Maxim,' said a card he carried in his wallet […]), and yet, because of his shyness, which made his approaches circuitous, he repeatedly found himself doing exactly that."

"Yet it was part of being an American that, once you got started, you felt impelled to tell all the people all the truth all the time."

"Maybe any action becomes cowardly once you stop to reason about it. Conscience doth make cowards of us all, eh mamma mia? If you start an argument with yourself, that makes two people at least, and when you have two people, one of them starts appeasing the other."

"At home I never thought I was much of a conformist. But I now see that I was without knowing it. I did what everybody else did without being aware I was copying them. Here I mind being different. Being abroad makes you conscious of the whole imitative side of human behavior. The ape in man."

"If you want to be your own master, his father used to say, always be surprised by evil; never anticipate it."

"They would not be happy unless she conformed to their definition of enjoyment, which meant that she would have to be miserable to satisfy them."

"The clamor of agreement betrayed the anti-French sentiment ever ready to be mobilized when Americans in Paris got together. And as happened with anti-Semites merrily fraternizing, nobody at the table seemed to remember that there were French people present."

"Ars longa vita brevis est was a truth that could not be argued with in the Eternal City."

"Making exceptions was usually a poor idea, he found; it was the same principle as 'Just one won't hurt you.'"

"It struck him that the closer Nature got to the human, the uglier it could be. You could hardly find a plant that was not beautiful, even in a strange mottled way, but there were plenty of hideous simians."

"He spoke in a low weak voice. 'God is dead,' Peter understood him to say. Peter sat up. ' I know that,' he protested. 'And you didn't say that anyway. Nietzsche did.' He felt put upon, as though by an impostor. Kant smiled. 'Yes, Nietzsche said that. And even when Nietzsche said it, the news was not new, and maybe not so tragic after all. Mankind can live without God.' 'I agree,' said Peter. 'I've always lived without him.' 'No, what I say to you is something important. You did not hear me correctly. Listen now carefully and remember.' Again he looked Peter steadily and searchingly in the eyes. 'Perhaps you have guessed it. Nature is dead, mein Kind [my child].'"

"[Y]ou're so darned liberal that you're sort of perverse."

"Her [Sophie Weil's] fault was only an unusual degree of mental activity. The curse of intelligence. Stupid people were unconscious of their slow-moving thought processes."

"Aileen and the dominie [Reverend Frank Barber], in their obliviousness, were illustrating the worst of what he had heard of the American character. A people given to argumentation, someone had said. And, whatever the subject, the debate was always between themselves — as though only their opinions counted — and was settled when they reached a conclusion or simply got tired, as the world had watched them do in Vietnam. At least Sophie had held her peace; perhaps, being Jewish, she lacked the authority to pontificate conferred on the others [the Wasps] as a birthright."

"We reverence art as something sacred […] We've come to worship a class of objects — paintings and sculptures — and we treat their creators as gods. […] I think this totemism has a lot to do with the failure of organized religion. Despite church attendance figures, we've let ordinary humanity lose touch with the divine, with God. No wonder that the lucky few among us are tempted to put daubs of oil on canvas in His place."

"If a hostage or two got killed, it had to be seen in the perspective of the greater good of the greater number. But works of art were a different type of non-combatant, not to be touched with a ten-foot pole by any government respectful of "values." It was in the nature of civilians to die sooner or later, by preference in bed, but also in car crashes, earthquakes, air raids and so on, while works of art by their nature and in principle were imperishable. In addition, they were irreplaceable, which could not be said of their owners."

"You never learn a language unless you use it."

"Art had a disquieting power of producing social embarrassment; […] it caused people to make silly remarks and then laugh self-consciously, as if the pictures, which knew better, could hear them. It could not be just ignorance; displays of armor and mummies and natural-history exhibits did not have that effect. […] If you were with art long enough, […] you began to get the feeling that it was looking right at you."

"We all know in our gut that art educates. In other societies, they're aware of the power it has of speaking directly to the masses, teaching them to be better socialists, better citizens. The trouble is that with us it's fallen into the wrong hands. Forget the speculators. I mean you proud possessors that claim to have a corner in it. This isn't the eighteenth century. The concept of the collector is so rotten by now that it stinks."

"His [Victor's] voice rose suddenly, sounding shrill and aggrieved, as though someone was accusing him. That was where examinations of conscience tended to end — in a burst of pitiful anger. The Church was right; confession to a priest, carrying absolution and penance was wiser."

"What about works of art — the Parthenon — that have always belonged to general realm of onlookers, gods, supposedly, and men? Frescoes on churches and statues standing in public squares. Cathedrals. Skyscrapers. Whoever commissioned them — cardinals or Seagrams or the city fathers — by now they're part of the social fabric. Surely they're art as it was meant to be. Sacred artifacts owned by nobody and by everybody that passes by. A lot of them (Chartres) visible from a long way off. But they can be tucked away in a cloister (Moissac) or even in an oratory shown you by an old nun. The point is, they've become assimilated to whole family of natural objects — mountain ranges, harbors, stands of trees — that have settled down to live with us too. Of course they "do" something for human community; they're pillars holding it up. But also living members. Come to be seen often as protectors, esp. in old cities. Like lares and penates of Roman house. Perhaps represent eternity, on account of remarkable endurance. Anyway they "concentrate the mind wonderfully," as Dr. J. said of hanging."

"90% of the population is a fanatic […] Frank is a fanatic on keeping an open mind. […] Ahmed a doll. Fanaticism linked to abstinence. Abstinence from alcohol, tobacco, sex, forbidden books, forbidden thoughts. There's the distinction: H. and J. not madly tolerant but enjoy thinking, take pleasure in play of their minds."

"Idealists, I know, are dangerous, but the claim of the ideal (Ibsen) has to be felt or else.... Or else the world, our deteriorating world, will continue on its course by sheer inertia. Inertia is taking over, right here; you can sense it."

"You can date the evolving life of a mind, like the age of a tree, by the rings of friendship formed by the expanding central trunk. In the course of my history, not love or marriage so much as friendship has promoted growth."

"[I]t is a mistake to think that an intellectual is required to be intelligent; there are occasions when the terms seem to be almost antonyms."

"In my first year at Annie Wright Seminary, I lost my virginity. I'm not sure whether this was an "educational experience" or not. The act did not lead to anything and was not repeated for two years. But at least it dampened my curiosity about sex and so left my mind free to think about other things."

"Nobody in this land, certainly no Christian, can accept hating on a full-time basis; it is apt to reflect back on the hater."

"[I]n school, character is fate."

"When you have committed an action that you cannot bear to think about, that causes you to writhe in retrospect, do not seek to evade the memory: make yourself relive it, confront it repeatedly over and over, till finally, you will discover, through sheer repetition it loses its power to pain you. It works, I guarantee you, this sure-fire guilt-eradicator, like a homeopathic medicine — like in small doses applied to like. It works, but I am not sure that it is a good thing."

"About truth I have always been monotheistic. It has been an article of faith with me, going back to college days, that there is a truth and that it is knowable."

"A good deal of education consists of unlearning — the breaking of bad habits, as with a tennis serve. This was emphatically true of a Vassar education: where other colleges aimed at development, bringing out what was already there like a seed waiting to sprout, Vassar remade a girl. Vassar was transformational."

"To marry a man without loving him, which was what I had just done, not really perceiving it, was a wicked action, I saw. Stiff with remorse and terror, I lay under the thin blanket through a good part of the night; as far as I could tell from what seemed a measureless distance, my untroubled mate was sleeping."

"Every year I started Ulysses, but I could not get beyond the first chapter — "stately, plump Buck Mulligan" — page 47, I think it was. Then one day, long after, in a different apartment, with a different man (which?), I found myself on page 48 and never looked back. This happened with many of us: Ulysses gradually — but with an effect of suddenness — became accessible. It was because in the interim we had been reading diluted Joyce in writers like Faulkner and so had got used to his ways, at second remove."

"Of all the men I slept with in my studio-bed on Gay Street (and there were a lot: I stopped counting) I liked Bill Mangold the best. Until I began to see Philip Rahv."

"It was getting rather alarming. I realised one day that in twenty four hours I had slept with three different men. And one morning I was in bed with somebody while over his head I talked on the telephone with somebody else…I did not feel promiscuous. Maybe no-one does. And maybe more girls sleep with more men than you would ever think to look at them."

"I was able to compare the sexual equipment of the various men I made love with and there were amazing differences, in both length and massiveness. One handsome married man, who used to arrive with two Danishes from a very good bakery, had a penis about the size and shape of a lead pencil; he shall remain nameless. In my experience there was usually a relation to height, as Philip Rahv and Bill Mangold, both tall men, bore out. There may be dwarfish men with monstrously large organs, but I have never known one. It was not until later, after my second divorce, that I met an impotent man or a pervert (two of the latter)... None of my partners, the reader will be relieved to hear, had a venereal disease."

"One writer whom the circle could not intimidate in any way was Mary McCarthy … I see her indeed in the image of a Valkyrie maiden, riding her steed into the circle, amid thunder and lightning, and out again, bearing the body of some dead hero across her saddle — herself unscathed and headed promptly for her typewriter."

"The play centers on an incident that occurred on my old PBS show, in 1979. I always enjoyed having McCarthy as a guest. She was lively, witty, opinionated, and striking on camera. And there was her smile, hilariously immortalized by Randall Jarrell, in Pictures from an Institution: "Torn animals were removed at sunset from that smile.""

"How guilty should I feel? The lawsuit crippled McCarthy financially and wrecked her health. Is there a term in law for something that doesn’t directly cause a crime—those few little words of mine on the air—which, omitted, would have prevented it? I’m deeply sorry that I never spoke to McCarthy again. Could we have had dinner and enjoyed a grim laugh? Might she have said, "Don’t blame yourself. I was hellbent on doing the Hellman thing"? Ephron, in her play, suggests that McCarthy had the whole thing planned. I don’t really think she did, though. Maybe that’s why I felt sorrier for her than for Old Scaly Bird. Scariest thought: Is it possible that I was set up? Used, by the two titans, to provide publicity for their fading careers? (I was, at the time, working more than they were.)"

"Intellectual responses are known as opinions and Mary had them and had them. Still she was so little of an ideologue as to be sometimes unsettling in her refusal of tribal reaction — left or right, male or female, that sort of thing. She was doggedly personal and often this meant being so aslant that there was, in this determined rationalist, an endearing crankiness, very American and homespun somehow."

"Mary McCarthy was the cultural heroine of my generation. … I felt how different things were now when I watched Man in the Brooks Brothers Shirt on television. It's very well done. Elizabeth McGovern is hip and smart in the central role. What's missing is the importance the story had when it first appeared. In the 1940s it was wonderfully giddy and daring. It was tonic. It was the story that bright people — women especially — talked about and identified with. This was a feminist heroine who was strong and foolish; it was before feminist writing got bogged down in victimization. She was asinine but she wasn't weak. I looked at the reviews of the television production and the people writing about it didn’t seem to get it at all. It was just a story."

"She was a great heroine to many young women of my age. She was a heroine for her independence and her courage in speaking out in defence of lost causes and for her ability to combine great personal glamour with a ferocious intelligence."

"Our First Lady of letters."

"Mary McCarthy was a rara avis, a rare bird: a truly sexy intellectual who was nonetheless more interested in truth than in being intellectually sexy or fashionable. … The real beauty of her life and work is that she was an explorer who never compromised her freedom or integrity. Her writing was symptomatic of this. It never quite became an end in itself, but remained, throughout her life, a means to articulating herself as "her own woman." In that she succeeded marvellously and it is the way in which she did it for which she deserves lasting respect and emulation."

"I absolutely adored Mary. I was transfixed by her. She was so beautiful, so witty, so much fun to talk to."

"A love of books, of holding a book, turning its pages, looking at its pictures, and living its fascinating stories goes hand-in-hand with a love of learning."

"Every child in American should have access to a well-stocked school library. … An investment in libraries is an investment in our children's future."

"I'm not wild about the term first lady. I'd just like to be called Laura Bush."

"We talk about issues, but I'm not his adviser, I'm his wife... I find that it's really best not to give your spouse a lot of advice. I don't want a lot of advice from him."

"In almost every single way, George and I share the same values. And if we differ on some issues, it's very, very minor."

"In contrast to my husband, I can pronounce the word nuclear."

"AIDS respects no national boundaries; spares no race or religion; devastates men and women, rich and poor. No country can ignore this crisis. Fighting AIDS is an urgent calling — because every life, in every land, has value and dignity."

"Education is spreading hope. Millions are now learning to live with HIV/AIDS — instead of waiting to die from it."

"All people need to know how AIDS is transmitted, and every country has an obligation to educate its citizens. This is why every country must also improve literacy, especially for women and girls, so that they can make wise choices that will keep them healthy and safe."

"Mrs. Bush: I don’t think there is anything wrong with singing it in Spanish. The point is it’s the United States national anthem and what people want is it to be sung in a way that respects the United States and our culture. At the same time, we are a nation of immigrants. We are a nation of many, many languages, because immigrants come and bring their languages. Larry King: Is that an issue you disagree with your husband? He says it should be sung in English. Mrs. Bush: I think it should be sung in English, of course."

"I also want to encourage anyone who has been affected by hurricane Ka, uh, Karina..."

"Ann Curry: You know the American people are suffering watching -- Mrs. Bush: Believe me, no one suffers more than their president and I do when we watch this, and certainly the commander in chief, who has asked our military to go into harm's way."

"When I was in my 20s, I was a bookworm — spent 12 hours of the day in the library. How I met George, I'll never know."

"The power of a book lies in its power to turn a solitary act into a shared vision. As long as we have books, we are not alone."

"Libraries allow children to ask questions about the world and find the answers. And the wonderful thing is that once a child learns to use a library, the doors to learning are always open."

"In the United States, the presidency is not just about one person. The presidency is about all of the people who join with that president in years of service to our remarkable nation. They are the people who never fly on Air Force One, but who put in countless late nights and earlier mornings, who spend less time with their family and friends and more time hard at work caring for our country. The presidency is about the men and women of our military who serve every president and who make the ultimate sacrifice to protect us and keep us safe. The stones in the walls represent your years of service."

"A presidential library is not just about one president; each library is about our nation and the world during that time. The George W. Bush Presidential Center reflects George’s role as the first president of the 21st century. Like our new era, the building and its grounds are designed to be forward-looking, and they’re green and sustainable. They celebrate the native environment of our home state of Texas. The archives housed here are completely digital. And the entire Bush Center is designed to present the past and engage the future. We welcome scholars, and students, and the community at large to gather here for generations to come."

"The Center is designed to be human in scale, because, like the White House, presidential libraries belong to all Americans. The people across our nation were the ones who inspired us every day. Here, we remember the heartbreak and the heroism of September 11th, and the bravery of those who answered the call to defend our country. We remember the volunteers of all ages and all walks of life who came to the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. And we remember all the people who step forward to help others -- whether to teach a child to read, or to feed a hungry family."

"The White House has disinvited the poets/to a cultural tea in honor of poetry/after the Secret Service got wind of a plot/to fill Mrs. Bush’s ears with anti-war verse./Were they afraid the poets might persuade/a sensitive girl who always loved to read,/a librarian who stocked the shelves with Poe/and Dickinson? Or was she herself afraid/to be swayed by the cooing doves, and live at odds/with the screaming hawks in her family?/The Latina maids are putting away the cups/and the silver spoons, sad to be missing out/on música they seldom get to hear/in the hallowed halls. . . The valet sighs/as he rolls the carpets up and dusts the blinds./Damn but a little Langston would be good/in this dreary mausoleum of a place!/Why does the White House have to be so white?/The chef from Baton Rouge is starved for verse/uncensored by Homeland Security./NO POETRY UNTIL FURTHER NOTICE!/Instead the rooms are vacuumed and set up/for closed-door meetings planning an attack/against the ones who always bear the brunt/of silencing: the poor, the powerless,/the ones who serve, those bearing poems, not arms./So why be afraid of us, Mrs. Bush?/you’re married to a scarier fellow./We bring you tidings of great joy-/not only peace but poetry on earth."

"("In February of 2003, the first lady had cancelled a White House poetry symposium honoring Emily Dickinson, Langston Hughes and Walt Whitman. Laura Bush had feared the invited poets might invoke poems critical of invading Iraq. I asked Grace Paley for her response to Laura Bush’s action.") GP: Well, it was probably the most extraordinary event to happen to American poets, and Laura Bush did it. It couldn’t have happened, though, really, without — you know, when people say, “What can poets do?” I often say, “Just what any other working group could do to get anything accomplished, and that is to organize.”...So I owe — we — all poets owe a great deal to Laura Bush, Sam Hamill and the computer, because, as this happened, within about two days, there were about — I don’t know — 15,000 poets writing letters, writing, sending poems to Laura Bush, poems of protest."

"For those who care, and I understand if you don't: Today I quit being a Christian. I'm out. I remain committed to Christ as always but not to being "Christian" or to being part of Christianity. It's simply impossible for me to "belong" to this quarrelsome, hostile, disputatious, and deservedly infamous group. For ten years, I've tried. I've failed. I'm an outsider. My conscience will allow nothing else. … In the name of Christ, I refuse to be anti-gay. I refuse to be anti-feminist. I refuse to be anti-artificial birth control. I refuse to be anti-Democrat. I refuse to be anti-secular humanism. I refuse to be anti-science. I refuse to be anti-life. In the name of Christ, I quit Christianity and being Christian. Amen."

"I was so conflicted and disillusioned about organized religion that I couldn't write. … I think my writings will go on being the writings of a believer in Christ. I think I'll be less frustrated and freer to write about the full dimension of what that means. But I write metaphysical thrillers, and how this works out in fiction is always mysterious: characters confront dilemmas. The worldview of the novel is certainly optimistic and that of a believer. What character will say what, I don't know until I start writing. …. Because I had written Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana, I had become a public Christian. I wanted my readers to know that I was stepping aside from organized religion and the names Christian and Christianity because I wanted to exonerate myself from the things organized religion was doing in the name of Jesus. Christians have lost credibility in America as people who know how to love. They have become associated with hatred, persecution, attempting to abolish the separation of church and state, and trying to pressure people to vote certain ways in elections. I wanted to make it clear that I did not in any way remain complicit with those things."

""I see . . ." said the vampire thoughtfully, and slowly he walked across the room towards the window. [first line]"

"God kills, and so shall we; indiscriminately He takes the richest and the poorest, and so shall we; for no creatures under God are as we are, none so like him as ourselves, dark angels not confined to the stinking limits of hell but wandering His earth and all its kingdoms."

"People who cease to believe in God or goodness altogether still believe in the devil. I don't know why. No, I do indeed know why. Evil is always possible. And goodness is eternally difficult."

"Vampires pretending to be humans pretending to be vampires ... How avant-garde!"

"Your quest is for darkness only. This sea is not your sea. The myths of men are not your myths. Men’s treasures are not yours."

"Good? What are you talking about, 'Good'?" "That it's good, that it does some good, that there is good in it! Dear God, even if there is no meaning in this world, surely there can still be goodness! It's good to eat, to drink, to laugh, to be together!"

"The truth is most women are weak, be they mortal or immortal. But when they are strong, they are absolutely unpredictable."

"I want to know, for example, why beauty exists," she [Gabrielle] said, "why nature continues to contrive it, and what is the link between the life of a lightning storm with the feelings these things inspire in us? If God does not exist, if these things are not unified into one metaphorical system, then why do they retain for us such symbolic power? Lestat calls it the Savage Garden, but for me that is not enough."

"Doesn't matter now, devils who paint angels."

"Nothing in all the world is so nonsensical and contradictory, save mortals, that is, who live in the grip of the superstitions of the past."

"To really ask is to open the door to the whirlwind. The answer may annihilate the question and the questioner."

"In spite of all the refinements of civilization that conspired to make art – the dizzying perfection of the string quartet or the sprawling grandeur of Fragonard's canvases – beauty was savage. It was as dangerous and lawless as the earth had been eons before man had one single coherent thought in his head or wrote codes of conduct on tablets of clay. Beauty was a Savage Garden."

"I'm the Vampire Lestat. Remember me? The vampire who became a super rock star, the one who wrote the autobiography? The one with the blond hair and the blue eyes, and the insatiable desire for visibility and fame? You remember. [first line]"

"But let me be a lover in the Savage Garden with you, and the light that went out of life would come back in a great burst of glory. Out of mortal flesh I would pass into eternity. I would be one of you."

"Tell me how bad I am... it makes me feel so good. [Last line]"

"And when a strong man is sweet, even Goddesses look down from Mount Olympus."

"Give me a man or woman who has read a thousand books and you give me an interesting companion. Give me a man or woman who has read perhaps three and you give me a dangerous enemy indeed."

"The Vampire Lestat here. I have a story to tell you. It's about something that happened to me."

"The young know how truly difficult and dreadful youth can be. Their youth is wasted on everyone else, that's the horror. The young have no authority, no respect."

"Centuries ago, when I first stood on that little boulevard stage in Paris — when I saw the happy faces, when I heard applause — I felt as if my body and soul had found their destiny; I felt as if every promise in my birth and childhood had begun its fulfillment at last. Oh, there were other actors, worse and better; other singers; other clowns; there have been a million since and a million will come after this moment. But each of us shines with his own inimitable power; each of us comes alive in his own unique and dazzling moment; each of us has his chance to vanquish the others forever in the eye of the beholder, and that is the only kind of accomplishment I can really understand: the kind of accomplishment in which the self-this self, if you will — is utterly whole and triumphant."

"Of course I deserve it,” I said, stroking Mojo. “That’s the simplest thing about dealing with me, apparently. I always deserve the worst! The worst disloyalty, the worst betrayal, the worst abandonment! Lestat the scoundrel. Well, they have left this scoundrel entirely on his own."

"We would make our heroes shallow,” he answered, the words very slow and almost sad. “We would make them brittle. It is they who must remind us of the true meaning of strength."

"Maybe that's what Hell is. You go mad. And all your demons come and get you just as fast as you can think them up."

"The worst takes its time to come, and then to pass."

"Roman influence seeds itself, sprouting mighty oaks right through the modern forest of computers, digital disks, microviruses and space satellites."

"You do have a story inside you; it lies articulate and waiting to be written — behind your silence and your suffering."

"But reason was only a created thing, imposed with faith upon the world, and the stars promise nothing to no one."

"No matter how long we exist, we have our memories. Points in time which time itself cannot erase. Suffering may distort my backward glances, but even to suffering, some memories will yield nothing of their beauty or their splendor. Rather they remain as hard as gems."

"Oh my precocious one," she said. "You never fail to charm me. Bisexual is it, how Byronic and charming. Doesn't that double's one's chances for love? I'm so delighted."

""No, but one can feel desperate at any age, don't you think? The young are eternally desperate," he said frankly. "And books, they offer one hope – that a whole universe might open up from between the covers, and falling into that universe, one is saved."

"I was seven years old. What do you know when you’re seven years old? All my life, or so I thought, we’d been in the city of Alexandria, in the Street of the Carpenters, with the other Galileans, and sooner or later we were going home."

"I saw it," said James. "I saw it when he made the sparrows out of clay on the Sabbath. The teacher told him he shouldn’t do such things on the Sabbath. Jesus looked at the birds and they turned into real birds. They flew away. You saw it too. He killed Eleazer, Mother, I saw it."

"There are noble books but one wants the breath of life sometimes. And I see no divine person. I myself am more divine than any I see — I think that is enough to say about them..."

"Beware of over-great pleasure in being popular or even beloved."

"Put up at the moment of greatest suffering a prayer, not for thy own escape, but for the enfranchisement of some being dear to thee, and the sovereign spirit will accept thy ransom."

"Men disappoint me so, I disappoint myself so, yet courage, patience, shuffle the cards ..."

"It is astonishing what force, purity, and wisdom it requires for a human being to keep clear of falsehoods."

"How many persons must there be who cannot worship alone since they are content with so little."

"Might the simple maxim, that honesty is the best policy be laid to heart! Might a sense of the true aims of life elevate the tone of politics and trade, till public and private honor become identical!"

"Let no one dare to call another mad who is not himself willing to rank in the same class for every perversion and fault of judgment. Let no one dare aid in punishing another as criminal who is not willing to suffer the penalty due to his own offenses."

"Were the destiny of woman thus exactly marked out, did she invariably retain the shelter of a parent’s or guardian’s roof till she married, did marriage give her a sure home and a protector, were she never liable to be made a widow, or, if so, sure of finding immediate protection from a brother or new husband, so that she might never be forced to stand alone one moment, and were her mind given for this world only, with no faculties capable of eternal growth and infinite improvement, we would still demand of her a far wider and more generous culture than is proposed by those who so anxiously define her sphere."

"Women are the best helpers of one another. Let them think; let them act; till they know what they need. But if you ask me what offices they may fill, I reply-any. Let them be sea-captains if you will."

"The use of criticism, in periodical writing, is to sift, not to stamp a work."

"Genius will live and thrive without training, but it does not the less reward the watering-pot and pruning-knife."

"Very early, I knew that the only object in life was to grow."

"It does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores."

"Essays, entitled critical, are epistles addressed to the public, through which the mind of the recluse relieves itself of its impressions."

"There are two modes of criticism. One which … crushes to earth without mercy all the humble buds of Phantasy, all the plants that, though green and fruitful, are also a prey to insects or have suffered by drouth. It weeds well the garden, and cannot believe the weed in its native soil may be a pretty, graceful plant. There is another mode which enters into the natural history of every thing that breathes and lives, which believes no impulse to be entirely in vain, which scrutinizes circumstances, motive and object before it condemns, and believes there is a beauty in natural form, if its law and purpose be understood."

"It is not because the touch of genius has roused genius to production, but because the admiration of genius has made talent ambitious, that the harvest is still so abundant."

"We doubt not the destiny of our country — that she is to accomplish great things for human nature, and be the mother of a nobler race than the world has yet known. But she has been so false to the scheme made out at her nativity, that it is now hard to say which way that destiny points."

"For precocity some great price is always demanded sooner or later in life."

"Man tells his aspiration in his God; but in his demon he shows his depth of experience; and casts light into the cavern through which he worked his cause up to the cheerful day."

"I accept the universe."

"I now know all the people worth knowing in America, and I find no intellect comparable to my own."

"I am 'too fiery' … yet I wish to be seen as I am, and would lose all rather than soften away anything."

"Your prudence, my wise friend, allows too little room for the mysterious whisperings of life."

"You are intellect, I am life!"

"To one who has enjoyed the full life of any scene, of any hour, what thoughts can be recorded about it, seem like the commas and semicolons in the paragraph, mere stops."

"All around us lies what we neither understand nor use. Our capacities, our instincts for this our present sphere are but half developed. Let us confine ourselves to that till the lesson be learned; let us be completely natural; before we trouble ourselves with the supernatural. I never see any of these things but I long to get away and lie under a green tree and let the wind blow on me. There is marvel and charm enough in that for me."

"Who sees the meaning of the flower uprooted in the ploughed field? The ploughman who does not look beyond its boundaries and does not raise his eyes from the ground ? No — but the poet who sees that field in its relations with the universe, and looks oftener to the sky than on the ground. Only the dreamer shall understand realities, though, in truth, his dreaming must not be out of proportion to his waking!"

"I never lived, that I remember, what you call a common natural day. All my days are touched by the supernatural, for I feel the pressure of hidden causes, and the presence, sometimes the communion, of unseen powers. It needs not that I should ask the clairvoyant whether "a spirit-world projects into ours." As to the specific evidence, I would not tarnish my mind by hasty reception. The mind is not, I know, a highway, but a temple, and its doors should not be carelessly left open. Yet it were sin, if indolence or coldness excluded what had a claim to enter; and I doubt whether, in the eyes of pure intelligence, an ill-grounded hasty rejection be not a greater sign of weakness than an ill-grounded and hasty faith."

"The better part of wisdom is a sublime prudence, a pure and patient truth that will receive nothing it is not sure it can permanently lay to heart. Of our study there should be in proportion two-thirds of rejection to one of acceptance. And, amid the manifold infatuations and illusions of this world of emotion, a being capable of clear intelligence can do no better service than to hold himself upright, avoid nonsense, and do what chores lie in his way, acknowledging every moment that primal truth, which no fact exhibits, nor, if pressed by too warm a hope, will even indicate. I think, indeed, it is part of our lesson to give a formal consent to what is farcical, and to pick up our living and our virtue amid what is so ridiculous, hardly deigning a smile, and certainly not vexed. The work is done through all, if not by every one."

"Thou art greatly wise, my friend, and ever respected by me, yet I find not in your theory or your scope, room enough for the lyric inspirations, or the mysterious whispers of life. To me it seems that it is madder never to abandon oneself, than often to be infatuated; better to be wounded, a captive, and a slave, than always to walk in armor."

"There exists in the minds of men a tone of feeling toward women as toward slaves."

"We would have every arbitrary barrier thrown down. We would have every path laid open to Woman as freely as to Man. Were this done, and a slight temporary fermentation allowed to subside, we should see crystallizations more pure and of more various beauty. We believe the divine energy would pervade nature to a degree unknown in the history of former ages, and that no discordant collision, but a ravishing harmony of the spheres, would ensue. Yet, then and only then will mankind be ripe for this, when inward and outward freedom for Woman as much as for Man shall be acknowledged as a right, not yielded as a concession."

"Let it not be said, wherever there is energy or creative genius, 'She has a masculine mind.' This by no means argues a willing want of generosity toward Woman. Man is as generous towards her as he knows how to be. Wherever she has herself arisen in national or private history, and nobly shone forth in any form of excellence, men have received her, not only willingly, but with triumph."

"The electrical, the magnetic element in Woman has not been fairly brought out at any period. Everything might be expected from it; she has far more of it than Man. This is commonly expressed by saying that her intuitions are more rapid and more correct. You will often see men of high intellect absolutely stupid in regard to the atmospheric changes, the fine invisible links which connect the forms of life around them, while common women, if pure and modest, so that a vulgar self do not overshadow the mental eye, will seize and delineate these with unerring discrimination. Women who combine this organization with creative genius are very commonly unhappy at present. They see too much to act in conformity with those around them, and their quick impulses seem folly to those who do not discern the motives. This is an usual effect of the apparition of genius, whether in Man or Woman, but is more frequent with regard to the latter, because a harmony, an obvious order and self-restraining decorum, is most expected from her. Then women of genius, even more than men, are likely to be enslaved by an impassioned sensibility. The world repels them more rudely, and they are of weaker bodily frame. Those who seem overladen with electricity frighten those around them."

"The especial genius of Woman I believe to be electrical in movement, intuitive in function, spiritual in tendency."

"It is with just that hope that we welcome everything that tends to strengthen the fibre and develop the nature on more sides. When the intellect and affections are in harmony; when intellectual consciousness is calm and deep; inspiration will not be confounded with fancy."

"Male and female represent the two sides of the great radical dualism. But, in fact, they are perpetually passing into one another. Fluid hardens to solid, solid rushes to fluid. There is no wholly masculine man, no purely feminine woman. History jeers at the attempts of physiologists to bind great original laws by the forms which flow from them. They make a rule; they say from observation what can and cannot be. In vain! Nature provides exceptions to every rule. She sends women to battle, and sets Hercules spinning; she enables women to bear immense burdens, cold, and frost; she enables the man, who feels maternal love, to nourish his infant like a mother."

"What I mean by the Muse is that unimpeded clearness of the intuitive powers, which a perfectly truthful adherence to every admonition of the higher instincts would bring to a finely organized human being. It may appear as prophecy or as poesy. … and should these faculties have free play, I believe they will open new, deeper and purer sources of joyous inspiration than have as yet refreshed the earth. Let us be wise, and not impede the soul. Let her work as she will. Let us have one creative energy, one incessant revelation. Let it take what form it will, and let us not bind it by the past to man or woman, black or white."

"Heroes have filled the zodiac of beneficent labors, and then given up their mortal part to the fire without a murmur. Sages and lawgivers have bent their whole nature to the search for truth, and thought themselves happy if they could buy, with the sacrifice of all temporal ease and pleasure, one seed for the future Eden. Poets and priests have strung the lyre with heart-strings, poured out their best blood upon the altar which, reare'd anew from age to age, shall at last sustain the flame which rises to highest heaven. What shall we say of those who, if not so directly, or so consciously, in connection with the central truth, yet, led and fashioned by a divine instinct, serve no less to develop and interpret the open secret of love passing into life, the divine energy creating for the purpose of happiness; — of the artist, whose hand, drawn by a preexistent harmony to a certain medium, moulds it to expressions of life more highly and completely organized than are seen elsewhere, and, by carrying out the intention of nature, reveals her meaning to those who are not yet sufficiently matured to divine it; of the philosopher, who listens steadily for causes, and, from those obvious, infers those yet unknown; of the historian, who, in faith that all events must have their reason and their aim, records them, and lays up archives from which the youth of prophets may be fed. The man of science dissects the statement, verifies the facts, and demonstrates connection even where he cannot its purpose·"

"Plants of great vigor will almost always struggle into blossom, despite impediments. But there should be encouragement, and a free genial atmosphere for those of more timid sort, fair play for each in its own kind."

"Harmony exists no less in difference than in likeness, if only the same key-note govern both parts. Woman the poem, man the poet; woman the heart, man the head; such divisions are only important when they are never to be transcended. If nature is never bound down, nor the voice of inspiration stifled, that is enough."

"What Woman needs is not as a woman to act or rule, but as a nature to grow, as an intellect to discern, as a soul to live freely and unimpeded."

"Those who are not intimately and permanently linked with others, are thrown upon themselves; and, if they do not there find peace and incessant life, there is none to flatter them that they are not very poor, and very mean. A position which so constantly admonishes, may be of inestimable benefit. The person may gain, undistracted by other relationships, a closer communion with the one. Such a use is made of it by saints and sibyls."

"The position I early was enabled to take was one of self-reliance. And were all women as sure of their wants as I was, the result would be the same. But they are so overloaded with precepts and guardians who think that nothing is so much to be dreaded for a woman as originality of thought or character, that their minds are impeded with doubts till they lose their chance of fair, free proportions. The difficulty is to get them to the point from which they shall naturally develop self-respect, and learn self-help."

"Woman, self-centred, would never be absorbed by any relation it would be only an experience to her as to man. It is a vulgar error that love, a love, to Woman is her whole existence; she also is born for Truth and Love in their universal energy."

"I stand in the sunny noon of life. Objects no longer glitter in the dews of morning, neither are yet softened by the shadows of evening. Every spot is seen, every chasm revealed. Climbing the dusty hill, some fair effigies that once stood for symbols of human destiny have been broken; those I still have with me show defects in this broad light. Yet enough is left, even by experience, to point distinctly to the glories of that destiny; faint, but not to be mistaken streaks of the future day. I can say with the bard, "Though many have suffered shipwreck, still beat noble hearts." Always the soul says to us all, Cherish your best hopes as a faith, and abide by them in action. Such shall be the effectual fervent means to their fulfilment."

"Every relation, every gradation of nature is incalculably precious, but only to the soul which is poised upon itself, and to whom no loss, no change, can bring dull discord, for it is in harmony with the central soul. If any individual live too much in relations, so that he becomes a stranger to the resources of his own nature, he falls, after a while, into a distraction, or imbecility, from which he can only becured by a time of isolation, which gives the renovating fountains time to rise up. With a society it is the same."

"There is a Polish countess here, who likes me much. She has been very handsome, still is, in the style of the full-blown rose. She is a widow, very rich, one of the emancipated women, naturally vivacious, and with talent. This woman envies me; she says, "How happy you are; so free, so serene, so attractive, so self-possessed!" I say not a word, but I do not look on myself as particularly enviable. A little money would have made me much more so; a little money would have enabled me to come here long ago, and find those that belong to me, or at least try my experiments; then my health would never have sunk, nor the best years of my life been wasted in useless friction. Had I money now, — could I only remain, take a faithful servant, and live alone, and still see those I love when it is best, that would suit me. It seems to me, very soon I shall be calmed, and begin to enjoy."

"Safety is not to be secured, then, by the wisest foresight. I shall embark more composedly in our merchant-ship, praying fervently, indeed, that it may not be my lot to lose my boy at sea, either by unsolaced illness, or amid the howling waves; or, if so, that Ossoli, Angelo, and I may go together, and that the anguish may be brief."

"I am absurdly fearful, and various omens have combined to give me a dark feeling. I am become indeed a miserable coward, for the sake of Angelino. I fear heat and cold, fear the voyage, fear biting poverty. I hope I shall not be forced to be as brave for him, as I have been for myself, and that, if I succeed to rear him, he will be neither a weak nor a bad man. But I love him too much! In case of mishap, however, I shall perish with my husband and my child, and we may be transferred to some happier state."

"I feel perfectly willing to stay my threescore years and ten, if it be thought I need so much tuition from this planet; but it seems to me that my future upon earth will soon close. It may be terribly trying, but it will not be so very long, now. God will transplant the root, if he wills to rear it into fruit-bearing."

"I have a vague expectation of some crisis, — I know not what. But it has long seemed, that, in the year 1850, I should stand on a plateau in the ascent of life, where I should be allowed to pause for a while, and take more clear and commanding views than ever before. Yet my life proceeds as regularly as the fates of a Greek tragedy, and I can but accept the pages as they turn."

"I long so much to see you! Should anything hinder our meeting upon earth, think of your daughter, as one who always wished, at least, to do her duty, and who always cherished you, according as her mind opened to discover excellence. … I hope we shall be able to pass some time together yet, in this world. But, if God decrees otherwise, — here and HEREAFTER, — my dearest mother, "Your loving child, MARGARET.""

"Art can only be truly art by presenting an adequate outward symbol of some fact in the interior life."

"My friends write to urge my return the talk of our country as the land of the future. It is so, but that spirit which made it all it is of value in my eyes, which gave me all hope with which I can sympathize for that future, is more alive here at present than in America. My country is at present spoiled by prosperity, stupid with the lust of gain, soiled by crime in its willing perpetuation of slavery, shamed by an unjust war, noble sentiment much forgotten even by individuals, the aims of politicians selfish or petty, the literature frivolous and venal. In Europe, amid the teachings of adversity, a nobler spirit is struggling — a spirit which cheers and animates mine. I hear earnest words of pure faith and love. I see deeds of brotherhood. This is what makes my America. I do not deeply distrust my country. She is not dead, but in my time she sleepeth, and the spirits of our fathers flame no more, but lies hid beneath the ashes. It will not be so long; bodies cannot live when the soul gets too overgrown with gluttony and falsehood."

"The shrine is vowed to freedom, but, my friend, Freedom is but a means to gain an end. Freedom should build the temple, but the shrine Be consecrate to thought still more divine. The human bliss which angel hopes foresaw Is liberty to comprehend the law. Give, then, thy book a larger scope and frame, Comprising means and end in Truth's great name."

"In times of old, as we are told, When men more child-like at the feet Of Jesus sat, than now, A chivalry was known more bold Than ours, and yet of stricter vow, Of worship more complete."

"Knights of the Rosy Cross, they bore Its weight within the heart, but wore Without, devotion's sign in glistening ruby bright; The gall and vinegar they drank alone, But to the world at large would only own The wine of faith, sparkling with rosy light."

"The pass-word now is lost To that initiation full and free; Daily we pay the cost Of our slow schooling for divine degree. We know no means to feed an undying lamp; Our lights go out in every wind or damp."

"Though deepest dark our efforts should enfold, Unwearied mine to find the vein of gold; Forget not oft to lift the hope on high; The rosy dawn again shall fill the sky.And by that lovely light, all truth-revealed, The cherished forms which sad distrust concealed, Transfigured, yet the same, will round us stand, The kindred angels of a faithful band; Ruby and ebon cross both cast aside, No lamp is needed, for the night has died."

"Be to the best thou knowest ever true, Is all the creed; Then, by thy talisman of rosy hue, Or fenced with thorns that wearing thou must bleed, Or gentle pledge of Love's prophetic view, The faithful steps it will securely lead.Happy are all who reach that shore, And bathe in heavenly day, Happiest are those who high the banner bore, To marshal others on the way; Or waited for them, fainting and way-worn, By burdens overborne."

"We deemed the secret lost, the spirit gone, Which spake in Greek simplicity of thought, And in the forms of gods and heroes wrought Eternal beauty from the sculptured stone — A higher charm than modern culture won, With all the wealth of metaphysic lore, Gifted to analyze, dissect explore."

"A many-colored light flows from our sun; Art, 'neath its beams a motley thread has spun; The prison modifies the perfect day; But thou hast known such mediums to shun, And cast once more on life a pure white ray. Absorbed in the creations of thy mind, Forgetting daily self, my truest friend I find."

"Mercury has cast aside The signs of intellectual pride, Freely offers thee the soul: Art thou noble to receive? Canst thou give or take the whole, Nobly promise and believe? Then thou wholly human art, A spotless, radiant, ruby heart, And the golden chain of love Has bound thee to the realm above."

"Guard thee from the power of evil; Who cannot trust, vows to the devil."

"On the boundless plain careering By an unseen compass steering, Wildly flying, reappearing, — With untamed fire their broad eyes glowing In every step a grand pride showing, Of no servile moment knowing, —Happy as the trees and flowers, In their instinct cradled hours, Happier in fuller powers, —See the wild herd nobly ranging, Nature varying, not changing, Lawful in their lawless ranging."

"Wouldst have the princely spirit bowed? Whisper only, speak not loud, Mark and leave him in the crowd.Thou need'st not spies nor jailers have; The free will serve thee like the slave, Coward shrinking from the brave."

"With equal sweetness the commissioned hours Shed light and dew upon both weeds and flowers. The weeds unthankful raise their vile heads high, Flaunting back insult to the gracious sky; While the dear flowers, wht fond humility, Uplift the eyelids of a starry eye In speechless homage, and, from grateful hearts, Perfume that homage all around imparts."

"The pencil moved prophetic: together now men read In the fair book of nature, and find the hope they need. The wreath woven by the river is by the seaside worn, And one of fate's best arrows to its due mark is borne."

"There are who separate the eternal light In forms of man and woman, day and night; They cannot bear that God be essence quite."

"Existence is as deep a verity: Without the dual, where is unity? And the "I am"" cannot forbear to be;But from its primal nature forced to frame Mysteries, destinies of various name, Is forced to give that it has taught to claim."

"And dost thou seek to find the one in two? Only upon the old can build the new; The symbol which you seek is found in you."

"There are to whom each symbol is a mask; The life of love is a mysterious task; They want no answer, for they would not ask."

"A single thought transfuses every form; The sunny day is changed into the storm, For light is dark, hard soft, and cold is warm.One presence fill and floods the whole serene; Nothing can be, nothing has ever been, Except the one truth that creates the scene."

"You ask a faith, — they are content with faith; You ask to have, — but they reply "IT hath." There is no end, there need be no path."

"The day wears heavily, — why, then, ignore it; Peace is the soul's desire, — such thoughts restore it; The truth thou art, — it needs not implore it."

"The Presence all thy fancies supersedes, All that is done which thou wouldst seek in deeds, The wealth obliterates all seeming needs."

"To me, our destinies seem flower and fruit Born of an ever-generating root..."

"I do not think we are deceived to grow, But that the crudest fancy, slightest show, Covers some separate truth that we may know.In the one Truth, each separate fact is true; Eternally in one I many view, And destinies through destiny pursue."

"This is my tendency; but can I say That this my thought leads the true, only way? I only know it constant leads, and I obey."

"I only know one prayer — "Give me the truth, Give me that colored whiteness, ancient youth, Complex and simple, seen in joy and ruth.Let me not by vain wishes bar my claim, Nor soothe my hunger by an empty name, Nor crucify the Son of man by hasty blame.But in the earth and fire, water and air, Live earnestly by turns without despair, Nor seek a home till home be every where!""

"Thoughts which come at a call Are no better than if they came not at all Neither flower nor fruit, Yielding no root For plant, shrub, or tree."

"I prize thy gentle heart, Free from ambition, falsehood, or art, And thy good mind, Daily refined, By pure desire To fan the heaven-seeking fire."

"Triune, shaping, restless power, Life-flow from life's natal hour, No music chords are in thy sound; By some thou'rt but a rattle found; Yet, without thy ceaseless motion, To ice would turn their dead devotion."

"Life-flow of my natal hour, I will not weary of thy power, Till in the changes of thy sound A chord's three parts distinct are found. I will faithful move with thee, God-ordered, self-fed energy, Nature in eternity."

"I am immortal! I know it! I feel it! Hope floods my heart with delight! Running on air mad with life dizzy, reeling, Upward I mount, — faith is sight, life is feeling, Hope is the day-star of might!"

"It was thy kiss, Love, that made me immortal."

"Come, let us mount on the wings of the morning, Flying for joy of the flight, Wild with all longing, now soaring, now staying, Mingling like day and dawn, swinging and swaying, Hung like a cloud in the light: I am immortal! I feel it! I feel it! Love bears me up, love is might!"

"Chance cannot touch me! Time cannot hush me! Fear, Hope, and Longing, at strife, Sink as I rise, on, on, upward forever, Gathering strength, gaining breath, — naught can sever Me from the Spirit of Life!"

"We will worship by impromptu symbols, till the religion is framed for all Humanity. The beauty grows around us daily, the trees are now all in blossom and some of the vines; there is a Crown Imperial just in perfection, to which I paid my evening worship by the light of the fire, which reached to us, and there are flashes of lightning too. But I do not like the lightning so well as once, having been in too great danger. Yet just now a noble flash falls upon my paper, it ought to have noble thoughts to illumine, instead of these little nothings, but indeed to-night I write only to say: thou dear, dear friend, and we must must meet soon."

"To feel that there is so quick a bound to intercourse, makes us prize the moment, but then also makes it so difficult to use. Yet this one thing I wish to say, where so many must be left unsaid. You tell me, that I may, probably never know you wholly. Indeed the obstacles of time and space may prevent my understanding the workings of character; many pages of my new book may be shut against me, better than to yourself. Perhaps? I believe in Ahnungen beyond anything."

"Be what you would seem to be."

"When your dreams tire, they go underground and out of kindness that's where they stay."

"When people keep telling you that you can't do a thing, you kind of like to try it."

"She possessed more influence on the thought of American women than any woman previous to her time."

"In American literature she will remain a remarkable biographic phenomenon, while the tragic death of this Lycidas of women, a most painful personal story of shipwreck, was intensified by so many melancholy incidents that whoever, long years hence, may read them, will wonder how the gods could have been so pitiless, and why the life of new happiness and larger intellectual achievement which was before her should so suddenly have ended upon that savage and inhospitable shore."

"Without doubt Margaret Fuller stood first among women of the nineteenth century. … Though today almost forgotten, Margaret Fuller still probably holds more firsts than any other American woman who ever lived. As editor of the transcendentalist Dial, she was the first woman editor of an important intellectual magazine. She was the first woman to write a book about the West and such experiences as sleeping in a barroom, shooting rapids in an Indian canoe, and witnessing maltreatment of the red man by the white man. She was the first woman to break the taboo against the female sex in the Harvard College Library. As columnist for Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, she was the first U.S. woman journalist and and the first professional literary critic of cither sex in the United States."

"I remember that she made me laugh more than I liked; for I was, at that time, an eager scholar of ethics, and had tasted the sweets of solitude and stoicism, and I found something profane in the hours of amusing gossip into which she drew me..."

"She wore this circle of friends, when I first knew her, as a necklace of diamonds about her neck. They were so much to each other that Margaret seemed to represent them all, and to know her was to acquire a place with them. The confidences given her were their best, and she held them to them. She was an active, inspiring companion and correspondent, and all the art, the thought, the nobleness in New England seemed at that moment related to her and she to it. She was everywhere a welcome guest."

"Coincidences, good and bad, contretemps, seals, ciphers, mottoes, omens, anniversaries, names, dreams, are all of a certain importance to her. Her letters are often dated on some marked anniversary of her own, or of her correspondent's calendar. She signalized saints' days, "All-Souls," and "All-Saints," by poems, which had for her a mystical value."

"She chose the Sistrum for her emblem, and had it carefully drawn with a view to its being engraved on a gem. And I know not how many verses and legends came recommended to her by this symbolism. Her dreams, of course, partook of this symmetry. The same dream returns to her periodically, annually, and punctual to its night. One dream she marks in her journal as repeated for the fourth time: "In C., I at last distinctly recognized the figure of the early vision, whom I found after I had left A., who led me, on the bridge, towards the city, glittering in sunset, but, midway, the bridge went under water. I have often seen in her face that it was she, but refused to believe it.""

"Feminist literary critics have shown how in the 19th century women writers began to acknowledge women as their muses and their role models. Margaret Fuller and Sarah Orne Jewett acknowledged their indebtedness to Madame de Staël, the author of Corinne...The list could be indefinitely extended to show the almost desperate search of writing women for authoritative female predecessors."

"It is more than fifty years since Margaret Fuller, standing, as she said, “in the sunny noon of life,” wrote a little book, which she launched on the current of thought and society. It was entitled “Women in the Nineteenth Century”; and as the truths it proclaimed and the reforms it advocated were far in advance of public acceptance, its appearance was the signal for an immediate widespread newspaper controversy, that raged with great violence. I was young then, and as I took the book from the hands of the bookseller, wondering what the contents of the thin little volume could be, to provoke so wordy a strife, I opened the first page. My attention was immediately arrested, and a train of thought started"

"Because if the anarchist-feminists' rejection of a belief in inherent differences between the sexes automatically barred their use of feminist arguments that relied on the reinterpretation of conventional feminine stereotypes in the interests of equality, they were forced to revert to a simpler polemical position. Deriving their analytic framework from the work of an earlier generation of feminists, particularly such singular rebels as Mary Wollstonecraft and Sarah Grimké, the anarchist women insisted that the humanity of women was all the justification their cause required. For them the issue was uncomplicated: "Woman's emancipation means freedom, liberty. ...pure and simple." And when the Individualist Marie Louise announced that what women needed was "Liberty to act Liberty to live, Liberty to feel that our own acquired emancipation and happiness are not soiled by the aid of jealous proxies," her words were strikingly similar to the appeals to a common humanity voiced earlier by the Grimké sisters and Margaret Fuller."

"Just before the forecastle sunk, the remaining sailors determined to leave. The steward, with whom the child had always been a great favorite, took it, almost by main force, and plunged with it into the sea; neither reached the shore alive. The Marquis Ossoli was soon afterwards washed away, but his wife remained in ignorance of his fate. The cook, who was the last person that reached the shore alive, said that the last words he heard her speak were: "I see nothing but death before me, — I shall never reach the shore." It was between two and three o'clock in the afternoon, and after lingering for about ten hours, exposed to the mountainous surf that swept over the vessel, with the contemplation of death constantly forced upon her mind, she was finally overwhelmed as the foremast fell."

"Only her presence can give you the meaning of the name Margaret Fuller."

""I accept the universe" is reported to have been a favorite utterance of our New England transcendentalist, Margaret Fuller; and when some one repeated this phrase to Thomas Carlyle, his sardonic comment is said to have been: "Gad! she'd better!" At bottom the whole concern of both morality and religion is with the manner of our acceptance of the universe. Do we accept it only in part and grudgingly, or heartily and altogether? Shall our protests against certain things in it be radical and unforgiving, or shall we think that, even with evil, there are ways of living that must lead to good? If we accept the whole, shall we do so as if stunned into submission — as Carlyle would have us — "Gad! we'd better!" — or shall we do so with enthusiastic assent? Morality pure and simple accepts the law of the whole which it finds reigning, so far as to acknowledge and obey it, but it may obey it with the heaviest and coldest heart, and never cease to feel it as a yoke. But for religion, in its strong and fully developed manifestations, the service of the highest never is felt as a yoke. Dull submission is left far behind, and a mood of welcome, which may fill any place on the scale between cheerful serenity and enthusiastic gladness, has taken its place."

"After having admired the women of Rome, say to yourself, ‘I too am beautiful!’ … In you I met a real person. I need not give you any other praise."

"The only woman to whom it has been given to touch what is decisive in the present world and to have a presentiment of the world of the future."

"Margaret had done her strenuous work under fire while her husband stood in daily peril of death and while she herself was cut off from all communication with her baby. Only after it was all over might Emerson even begin to measure the depth of the distress out of which she wrote him from Rome, “Let me feel, that, amid the fearful agitations of the world, there are pure hands, with healthful, even pulse, stretched out toward me, if I claim their grasp.” In fact, we do not know whether the heart that beat with this healthful, even pulse ever did comprehend."

"If our imagination is challenged to picture what Margaret Fuller would have been like had she remained in Boston, it is positively staggered at trying to conceive what would have been the career of the Marchioness Ossoli in America. The wreck of the Elizabeth deprived the cultural history of this country of what would surely have been an exciting chapter."

"Her specter haunted all who knew her, and many who did not. Henry James, born in New York in 1843, stood beside his father on a Hudson River excursion boat and heard Washington Irving tell that Margaret Fuller had been drowned the day before. Even at the age of seven this small boy was resolved to be one on whom nothing is lost, and he knew, if nobody else did, that a heroine had gone to a heroic death."

"The ship struck at ten minutes after four A.M., and all hands, being mostly in their nightclothes, made haste to the forecastle, the water coming in at once. There they remained; the passengers in the forecastle, the crew above it, doing what they could. Every wave lifted the forecastle roof and washed over those within. The first man got ashore at nine; many from nine to noon. At flood-tide, about half past three o'clock, when the ship broke up entirely, they came out of the forecastle, and Margaret sat with her back to the foremast, with her hands on her knees, her husband and child already drowned. A great wave came and washed her aft. The steward had just before taken her child and started for shore. Both were drowned."

"Weave no more silks, ye Lyons looms, To deck our girls for gay delights! The crimson flower of battle blooms, And solemn marches fill the nights."

"The flag of our stately battles, not struggles of wrath and greed, Its stripes were a holy lesson, its spangles a deathless creed: 'T was red with the blood of freemen and white with the fear of the foe; And the stars that fight in their courses 'gainst tyrants its symbols know."

"What is the harvest of thy saints, O God! who dost abide? Where grow the garlands of thy chiefs In blood and sorrow dyed? What have thy servants for their pains?" "This only — to have tried."

"The strokes of the pen need deliberation as much as the sword needs swiftness."

"Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord: He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored; He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword: His truth is marching on."

"I have seen him in the watchfires of a hundred circling camps They have builded him an altar in the evening dews and damps, I have read His righteous sentence by the dim and flaring lamps, His Day is marching on."

"I have read a fiery gospel writ in burnished rows of steel: "As ye deal with my contemners, so with you my grace shall deal; Let the Hero, born of woman, crush the serpent with his heel, Since God is marching on.""

"He has sounded forth the trumpet that shall never call retreat; He is sifting out the hearts of men before His judgment-seat. Oh! be swift my soul to answer him, be jubilant my feet! Our God is marching on."

"In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea, With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me: As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free, While God is marching on."

"He is coming like the glory of the morning on the wave, He is wisdom to the mighty, he is succour to the brave, So the world shall be his footstool, and the soul of Time his slave, Our God is marching on."

"Arise then... women of this day! Arise, all women who have hearts!"

"We, the women of one country, Will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

"From the bosom of a devastated Earth a voice goes up with Our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe our dishonor, Nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil At the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home For a great and earnest day of counsel. Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead. Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means Whereby the great human family can live in peace..."

"In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask That a general congress of women without limit of nationality, May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient And the earliest period consistent with its objects, To promote the alliance of the different nationalities, The amicable settlement of international questions, The great and general interests of peace."

"I only hope you may be able not only to listen, but also to hear me. Your charity must multiply my small voice and do some such miracle as was done when the loaves and fishes fed the multitude in the ancient tune which has just been spoken of."

"Before I say anything on my own account, I want to take the word Christianity back to Christ himself, back to that mighty heart whose pulse seems to throb through the world to-day, that endless fountain of charity out of which I believe has come all true progress and all civilization that deserves the name. As a woman I do not wish to dwell upon any trait of exclusiveness in the letter which belongs to a time when such exclusiveness perhaps could not be helped, and which may have been put in where it was not expressed. I go back to that great Spirit which contemplated a sacrifice for the whole of humanity. That sacrifice is not one of exclusion, but of an infinite and endless and joyous inclusion. And I thank God for it."

"It has been extremely edifying to hear of the good theories of duty and morality and piety which the various religions advocate. I will put them all on one basis, Christian and Jewish and ethnic, which they all promulgate to mankind. But what I think we want now to do is to inquire why the practice of all nations, our own as well as any other, is so much at variance with these noble precepts? These great founders of religion have made the true sacrifice. They have taken a noble human life, full of every human longing and passion and power and aspiration, and they have taken it all to try and find out something about this question of what God meant man to be and does mean him to be. But while they have made this great sacrifice, how is it with the multitude of us? Are we making any sacrifice at all? We think it was very well that those heroic spirits should study, should agonize and bled for us. But what do we do?"

"I need not stand here to repeat any definition of what religion is. I think you will all say that it is aspiration, the pursuit of the divine in the human; the sacrifice of everything to duty for the sake of God and of humanity and of our own individual dignity."

"What is it that passes for religion? In some countries magic passes for religion, and that is one thing I wish, in view particularly of the ethnic faiths, could be made very prominent— that religion is not magic. I am very sure that in many countries it is supposed to be so. You do something that will bring you good luck. It is for the interests of the priesthood to cherish that idea. Of course the idea of advantage in this life and in another life is very strong, and rightly very strong in all human breasts. Therefore, it is for the advantage of the priesthoods to make it to be supposed that they have in their possession certain tricks, certain charms, which will give you either some particular prosperity in this world or possibly the privilege of immortal happiness. Now, this is not religion. This is most mischievous irreligion, and I think this Parliament should say, once for all, that the name of God and the names of his saints are not things to conjure with."

"I think nothing is religion which puts one individual absolutely above others, and surely nothing is religion which puts one sex above another. Religion is primarily our relation to the Supreme, to God himself. It is for him to judge; it is for him to say where we belong, who is highest and who is not; of that we know nothing. And any religion which will sacrifice a certain set of human beings for the enjoyment or aggrandizement or advantage of another is no religion. It is a thing which may be allowed, but it is against true religion. Any religion which sacrifices women to the brutality of men is no religion."

"From this Parliament let some valorous, new, strong, and courageous influence go forth, and let us have here an agreement of all faiths for one good end, for one good thing— really for the glory of God, really for the sake of humanity from all that is low and animal and unworthy and undivine."

"We returned to the city very slowly, of necessity, for the troops nearly filled the road. My dear minister was in the carriage with me, as were several other friends. To beguile the rather tedious drive, we sang from time to time snatches of the army songs so popular at that time, concluding, I think, with John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in the ground; His soul is marching on. The soldiers seemed to like this, and answered back, "Good for you!" Mr. Clarke said, "Mrs. Howe, why do you not write some good words for that stirring tune?" I replied that I had often wished to do this, but had not as yet found in my mind any leading toward it. I went to bed that night as usual, and slept, according to my wont, quite soundly. I awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, "I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them." So, with a sudden effort, I sprang out of bed, and found in the dimness an old stump of a pen which I remembered to have used the day before. I scrawled the verses almost without looking at the paper. I had learned to do this when, on previous occasions, attacks of versification had visited me in the night, and I feared to have recourse to a light lest I should wake the baby, who slept near me. I was always obliged to decipher my scrawl before another night should intervene, as it was only legible while the matter was fresh in my mind. At this time, having completed the writing, I returned to bed and fell asleep, saying to myself, "I like this better than most things that I have written.""

"While the war was still in progress, I was visited by a sudden feeling of the cruel and unnecessary character of the contest. It seemed to me a return to barbarism, the issue having been one which might easily have been settled without bloodshed. The question forced itself upon me, "Why do not the mothers of mankind interfere in these matters, to prevent the waste of that human life of which they alone bear and know the cost?" I had never thought of this before. The august dignity of motherhood and its terrible responsibilities now appeared to me in a new aspect, and I could think of no better way of expressing my sense of these than that of sending forth an appeal to womanhood throughout the world, which I then and there composed."

"Have we lost our God ? Never for one moment. Unspeakable, He is; the beneficent parent, the terrible, incorruptible judge, the champion of the innocent, the accuser of the guilty, refuge, hope, redeemer, friend; neither palace walls nor prison cells can keep Him out. Every step of our way from the birth hour He has gone with us. Were we at the gallows' foot, and deservedly, He would leave a sweet drop in the cup of death. He would measure suffering to us, but would forbid despair. The victory of goodness must be complete. The lost sheep must be found — ay, and the lost soul must turn to the way in which the peace of God prevails. We learn the dreadful danger of those who wander from the right path, but we may also learn the redeeming power which recalls and reclaims them. So fade our heavens and hells. Christ, if he knew their secrets, did not betray them. On the boundless sea of conjecture we are still afloat, with such mental tools as we possess to guide us, with the skies, the stars, the seasons, seeking a harbor from which no voyager has ever returned."

"To me has been granted a somewhat unusual experience of life. Ninety full years have been measured off to me, their lessons and opportunities unabridged by wasting disease or gnawing poverty. I have enjoyed general good health, comfortable circumstances, excellent company, and the incitements to personal effort which civilized society offers to its members. For this life and its gifts I am, I hope, devoutly thankful. I came into this world a hopeless and ignorant bit of humanity. I have found in it many helps toward the attainment of my full human stature, material, mental, moral. In this slow process of attainment many features have proved transient. Visions have come and gone. Seasons have bloomed and closed, passions have flamed and faded. Something has never left me. My relation to it has suffered many changes, but it still remains, the foundation of my life, light in darkness, consolation in ill fortune, guide in uncertainty. In the nature of things, I must soon lose sight of this sense of constant metamorphosis whose limits bound our human life. How about this unchanging element? Will it die when I shall be laid in earth? The visible world has no answer to this question. For it, dead is dead, and gone is gone. But a deep spring of life within me says: "Look beyond. Thy days numbered hitherto register a divine promise. Thy mortal dissolution leaves this promise unfulfilled, but not abrogated. Thou mayst hope that all that made thy life divine will live for thine immortal part." I have quoted Theodore Parker's great word, and have made no attempt, so far, to bring into view considerations which may set before us the fundamental distinction between what in human experience passes and what abides."

"Life passes, but the conditions of life do not. Air, food, water, the moral sense, the mathematical problem and its solution. These things wait upon one generation much as they did upon its predecessor. What, too, is this wonderful residuum which refuses to disappear when the very features of time seem to succumb to the law of change, and we recognize our world no more ? Whence comes this system in which man walks as in an artificial frame, every weight and lever of which must correspond with the outlines of an eternal pattern? Our spiritual life appears to include three terms in one. They are ever with us, this Past which does not pass, this Future which never arrives. They are part and parcel of this conscious existence which we call Present. While Past and Future have each their seasons of predominance, both are contained in the moment which is gone while we say, "It is here." So the Eternal is with us, whether we will or not, and the idea of God is inseparable from the persuasion of immortality; the Being which, perfect in itself, can neither grow nor decline, nor indeed undergo any change whatever. The great Static of the universe, the rationale of the steadfast faith of believing souls, the sense of beauty which justifies our high enjoyments, the sense of proportion which upholds all that we can think about ourselves and our world, the sense of permanence which makes the child in very truth parent to the man, able to solve the deepest riddle, the profoundest problem in all that is. Let us then willingly take the Eternal with us in our flight among the suns and stars. Experience is our great teacher, and on this point it is wholly wanting. No one on the farther side of the great Divide has been able to inform those on the hither side of what lies beyond."

"The promise of a future life is held to have such prominence in Christ's teaching as to lead Paul to say that the Master "brought life and immortality to light." How did he do this? By filling the life of to-day with the consciousness of eternal things, of truths and principles which would not change if the whole visible universe were to pass away. No one to-day, I think, will maintain that Christ created the hope which he aroused to an activity before undreamed of. The majority of the Jews believed in a life after death, as is shown by the segregation of the Sadducees from the orthodox of the synagogue. The new teaching vindicated the spiritual rights and interests of man. From the depths of his own heart was evolved the consciousness of a good that could not die. Man, the creature of a day, has a vested interest in things eternal."

"The reason which placed the stars, the sense of proportion which we recognize in the planetary system, finds its correspondence in this brain of ours. We question every feature of what we see, think, and feel. We try every link of the chain and find it sound if we ourselves are sound. This power of remotest question and assent is not of to-day nor yesterday. It transcends all bounds of time and space. It weighs the sun, explores the pathway of the stars, and writes, having first carefully read, the history of earth and heaven. It moves in company with the immortals. How much of it is mortal? Only so much as a small strip of earth can cover. These remains are laid away with reverence, having served their time. But what has become of the wonderful power which made them alive ? It belongs to that in nature which cannot die."

"Here I am, in Quaker surroundings, whose restful simplicity is most congenial to me. I feel here the earnest desire for genuine growth and culture which founds a slow but sure success. I am confirmed in my division of human energies. Ambitious people climb, but faithful people build."

"I feel that I must attack this creed of blood, which does much to keep up the cruel and sanguinary views of barbarous ages about God and man. Will take text, "Flesh and blood cannot inherit the kingdom of heaven." Show that Christ brought a new interest into the world; a new vision of God, the loving one; a new view of man, the hopeful and universal one; his death in its character the seal to his perfect life. But we are saved by his doctrine, by the same spirit which animated his life, — we are saved by his life, not by his death, except as it was the necessary moral sequence of his life."

"Charity is an unending self-discipline which always looks and leads towards the eternal affection. Therefore, its triumph shall be lasting and everlasting."

"We can teach no virtues we do not practice," occurred to me this afternoon; for without learning by experience how a virtue is acquired, how can we teach any one to acquire it? I thought of this in connection with the experience of undutiful children. By the working of this natural cause, they will not make their own children dutiful. Read in Luke of the angel which appeared to Christ in Gethsemane, strengthening Him. We all see this angel when we say truly, "Thy will, not mine, be done."

"There is no hell like that of a selfish heart, and there is no misfortune so great as that of not being able to make a sacrifice. These two thoughts come to me strongly this morning. It is something to have learned these truths so that we can never again doubt them."

"see how long Julia Ward Howe lived, and many other old ladies of whom I have read with delight in the American papers. How beautiful it is to see and hear an old woman of eighty or ninety addressing words of love and reason to the young generation!"

"Julia Ward Howe, although this was only discovered about ten years ago, wrote a novel about a hermaphrodite--a man/woman who loves both men and women--that most critics now think was her own meditation on her husband's bisexuality."

"I was at a point where I was ready to say I am what I am because of what I am and if you like me I'm grateful, and if you don't, what am I going to do about it?"

"There are always good parts. They may not pay what you want, and they may not have as many days' work as you want, they may not have the billing that you want, they may not have a lot of things, but — the content of the role itself — I find there are many roles."

"If there are, let's say, 20 astronauts, there may be two women among those 20 astronauts. If there are 20 FBI guys, there's one woman and the rest are men. So when somebody writes a script about life, usually the leading role will be the man, because mostly what women do is at home taking care of the children...That's the most important job there is on Earth. And why shouldn't women have it since they are the better of the two sexes?"

"I don't quite jump for joy, but I am awfully glad to see him."

"First of all, you have to marry the right person. If you marry the wrong person for the wrong reasons, then no matter how hard you work, it's never going to work, because then you have to completely change yourself, completely change them, completely — by that time, you're both dead. So I think you have to marry for the right reasons, and marry the right person."

"He understands not only with his brain but with his heart. And that might be called love. Not quite sure, but maybe that's the key."

"I identified with both women. But Emma had a stronger message for the women I want to speak to now— women who work. I wanted to tell them that choosing to work doesn't make them oddballs and isn't antisocial."

"I am quite surprised, that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We're talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world... I'm just a little dismayed that people aren't beyond it yet."

"To this day, when men meet me, there's always that movie in the back of their mind."

"The punctuation of anniversaries is terrible, like the closing of doors, one after another between you and what you want to hold on to."

"There are no signposts in the sky to show a man has passed that way before. There are no channels marked. The flier breaks each second into new uncharted seas."

"One can never pay in gratitude; one can only pay "in kind" somewhere else in life."

"Only in growth, reform, and change, paradoxically enough, is true security to be found."

"The wave of the future is coming and there is no fighting it."

"Lost time was like a run in a stocking. It always got worse."

"Dearly beloved — late again!"

"When the wedding march sounds the resolute approach, the clock no longer ticks, it tolls the hour…. The figures in the aisle are no longer individuals, they symbolize the human race."

"Him that I love, I wish to be Free — Even from me."

"I do not believe that sheer suffering teaches. If suffering alone taught, all the world would be wise, since everyone suffers. To suffering must be added mourning, understanding, patience, love, openness and the willingness to remain vulnerable. All these and other factors combined, if the circumstances are right, can teach and can lead to rebirth."

"I must write it all out, at any cost. Writing is thinking. It is more than living, for it is being conscious of living."

"Charles was a stubborn Swede, you know, and he himself never felt the need to explain his feelings about where he stood and about past statements. But I feel free now to elaborate on his actual attitudes. He never wanted to be regarded as a hero or leader, and he never had political ambitions. His prewar isolationist speeches were given in all sincerity for what he thought was the good of the country and the world... He was accused of being anti-Semetic, but in the 45 years I lived with him I never heard him make a remark against the Jews, not a crack or joke, and neither did any of our children."

"So dazzling was the spread of constellations that it had the impact of a vision, of some hidden insight. I drove home saying to myself: The dead, too, are like this, blazing within us — invisibly."

"Here sits the Unicorn In captivity; His bright invulnerability Captive at last"

"Here sits the Unicorn In captivity, Yet free."

"He could leap the corral, If he rose To his full height; He could splinter the fencing light, With three blows Of his porcelain hoofs in flight — If he chose. He could shatter his prison wall, Could escape them all — If he rose, If he chose."

"Here sits the Unicorn; The wounds in his side Still bleed"

"Dream wounds, dream ties Do not bind him there In a kingdom where He is unaware Of his wounds, of his snare."

"Here sits the Unicorn; Leashed by a chain of gold To the pomengranate tree. So light a chain to hold So fierce a beast; Delicate as a cross at rest On a maiden's breast. He could snap the golden chain With one toss of his mane, If he chose to move, If he chose to prove His liberty. But he does not choose What choice would lose. He stays, the Unicorn, In captivity."

"Yet look again — His horn is free, Rising above chain, fence, and tree, Free hymn of love; His horn Bursts from his tranquil brow Like a comet born; Cleaves like a galley's prow Into seas untorn; Springs like a lily, white From the Earth below; Spirals, a bird in flight To a longed-for height; Or a fountain bright, Spurting to light Of early morn — O luminous horn!"

"Here sits the Unicorn — In captivity? In repose."

"Forgotten the strife; Now the need to kill Has died like fire, And the need to love Has replaced desire"

"Quiet, the Unicorn, In contemplation stilled, With acceptance filled; Quiet, save for his horn; Alive in his horn; Horizontally, In captivity; Perpendicularly, Free."

"I … understand why the saints were rarely married women. I am convinced it has nothing inherently to do, as I once supposed, with chastity or children. It has primarily to do with distractions … Women's normal occupations in general run counter to creative life, or contemplative life or saintly life."

"I find I am shedding hypocrisy in human relationships. What a rest that will be! The most exhausting thing in life, I have discovered, is being insincere. That is why so much of social life is exhausting; one is wearing a mask. I have shed my mask."

"When one is a stranger to oneself then one is estranged from others too. If one is out of touch with oneself, then one cannot touch others."

"Rollers on the beach, wind in the pines, the slow flapping of herons across sand dunes, drown out the hectic rhythms of city and suburb, time tables and schedules. One falls under their spell, relaxes, stretches out prone. One becomes, in fact, like the element on which one lies, flattened by the sea; bare, open, empty as the beach, erased by today’s tides of all yesterday’s scribblings."

"The sea does not reward those who are too anxious, too greedy, or too impatient. To dig for treasures shows not only impatience and greed, but lack of faith. Patience, patience, patience, is what the sea teaches. Patience and faith. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach — waiting for a gift from the sea."

"The shape of my life today starts with a family. I have a husband, five children and a home just beyond the suburbs of New York. I have also a craft, writing, and therefore work I want to pursue. The shape of my life is, of course, determined by many other things; my background and childhood, my mind and its education, my conscience and its pressures, my heart and its desires. I want to give and take from my children and husband, to share with friends and community, to carry out my obligations to man and to the world, as a woman, as an artist, as a citizen. But I want first of all — in fact, as an end to these other desires — to be at peace with myself. I want a singleness of eye, a purity of intention, a central core to my life that will enable me to carry out these obligations and activities as well as I can. I want, in fact — to borrow from the languages of the saints — to live "in grace" as much of the time as possible. I am not using this term in a strictly theological sense. By grace I mean an inner harmony, essentially spiritual, which can be translated into outward harmony. I am seeking perhaps what Socrates asked for in the prayer from Phaedrus when he said, "May the outward and the inward man be at one." I would like to achieve a state of inner spiritual grace from which I could function and give as I was meant to in the eye of God."

"I believe most people are aware of periods in their lives when they seem to be "in grace" and other periods when they feel "out of grace," even though they may use different words to describe these states. In the first happy condition, one seems to carry all one’s tasks before one lightly, as if borne along on a great tide; and in the opposite state one can hardly tie a shoe-string. It is true that a large part of life consists in learning a technique of tying the shoe-string, whether one is in grace or not. But there are techniques of living too; there are even techniques in the search for grace."

"I have learned by some experience, by many examples, and by the writings of countless others before me, also occupied in the search, that certain environments, certain modes of life, certain rules of conduct are more conducive to inner and outer harmony than others. There are, in fact, certain roads that one may follow. Simplification of life is one of them."

"I mean to lead a simple life, to choose a simple shell I can carry easily — like a hermit crab. But I do not. I find that my frame of life does not foster simplicity. My husband and five children must make their way in the world. The life I have chosen as a wife and mother entrains a whole caravan of complications."

"By and large, mothers and housewives are the only workers who do not have regular time off. They are the great vacationless class."

"Good communication is as stimulating as black coffee, and just as hard to sleep after."

"We must relearn to be alone."

"One cannot collect all the beautiful shells on the beach. One can collect only a few, and they are more beautiful if they are few."

"I kept looking at the flowers in a vase near me: lavender sweet peas, fragile winged and yet so still, so perfectly poised, apart, and complete. They are self-sufficient, a world in themselves, a whole — perfect. Is that then, perfection? Is what those sweet peas had what I have, occasionally in moments like that? But flowers always have it — poise, completion, fulfillment, perfection; I only occasionally, like that moment. For that moment I and the sweet peas had an understanding."

"I saw standing against the great stone pillar — on more red plush — a tall, slim boy in evening dress — so much slimmer, so much taller, so much more poised than I expected. A very refined face, not at all like those grinning 'Lindy' pictures — a firm mouth, clear, straight blue eyes, fair hair, and nice color. Then I went down the line very confused and overwhelmed by it all. He did not smile — just bowed and shook hands."

"We were high above fields, and there far, far below, was a small shadow as of a great bird tearing along the neatly marked off fields. It gave me the most tremendous shock to realize for the first time the terrific speed we were going at and that that shadow meant us — us, like a mirror! That "bird" — it was us."

"The feeling of exultant joy that there is anyone like that in the world. I shall never see him again, and he did not notice me, or would ever, but there is such a person alive, there is such a life, and I am here on this earth, in this age, to know it!"

"Don't wish me happiness — I don't expect to be happy; it's gotten beyond that, somehow. Wish me courage and strength and a sense of humor — I will need them all."

"People don't want to be understood — I mean not completely. It's too destructive. Then they haven't anything left."

"I wonder why I bother to tell the truth when people ask me what I think of this and that and how I feel about this and that. I get so complicated and introspective that people often don't understand and are frankly puzzled and (naturally enough) bored. So why bother! It would be so much easier to say what they expected you to, and everything would be easy and pleasant."

"I want to write — I want to write — I want to write and never never never will. I know it and I am so unhappy and it seems as though nothing else mattered. Whatever I'm doing, it's always there, an ultimate longing there saying, "Write this — write that — write —" and I can't. Lack ability, time, strength, and duration of vision. I wish someone would tell me brutally, "You can never write anything. Take up home gardening!""

"It doesn't matter that it can't last, that we don't find it more often. To know that there is such perfection, that there has been such perfection — it is worth living for. It exists. It has been — it is. One can contemplate it and feel complete peace."

"I have come to believe that you can get along without anyone — that is, without the close contact of any one person. That is a terrible shock to me, but I think it is true. You do need companionship, but wherever you go, in whatever new environment, you will find people who, to a large degree, take the place of those you left...The intimate companionship goes, I think, when you leave a friend, but friendship stays. It is an inherent possibility of relationship that, once admitted — well, there it is."

"Life itself is always pulling you away from the understanding of life."

"Marriage is tough, because it is woven of all these various elements, the weak and the strong. "In love-ness" is fragile for it is woven only with the gossamer threads of beauty. It seems to me absurd to talk about "happy" and "unhappy" marriages."

"I have been overcome by the beauty and richness of our life together, those early mornings setting out, those evenings gleaming with rivers and lakes below us, still holding the last light. … Those fields of daisies we landed on, and dusty fields and desert stretches. Memories of many skies and earths beneath us — many days, many nights of stars."

"Charles is life itself — pure life, force, like sunlight — and it is for this that I married him and this that holds me to him — caring always, caring desperately what happens to him and whatever he happens to be involved in."

"He was naming the groups that were pro-war. No one minds his naming the British or the Administration. But to name "Jew" is un-American — even if it is done without hate or even criticism. Why?"

"One of the keys to happiness is a bad memory."

"Life is too short to be miserable."

"A deadline is negative inspiration. Still, it's better than no inspiration at all."

"You can't be truly rude until you understand good manners."

"No animal on the face of the earth could conceive of taxation. You and I work roughly six months a year to pay our local, state and federal taxes. If nothing else, this should convince you that animals are smarter than people."

"Divorce is the one human tragedy that reduces everything to cash."

"About all you can do in life is be who you are. Some people will love you for you. Most will love you for what you can do for them, and some won't like you at all."

"I finally figured out the only reason to be alive is to enjoy it."

"If the world were a logical place, men would ride side saddle."

"Normal is the average of deviance."

"I also think living in the country gives you faith. All you have to do is get up and look at the mountains and look at the other animals to realize that your problems are mostly made up or exacerbated by humans. But human life isn't necessarily life. There's so much more out there."

"Good judgment comes from experience, and experience comes from bad judgment."

"I think the reason I choose the comic approach so often is because it's harder, therefore affording me the opportunity to show off. Also, a comic vision is my natural world view, but I've grown up in spite of myself and I can pass the comic twist if it detracts from what the characters need. Yes, the life of a saint is hard."

"I have changed my definition of tragedy. I now think tragedy is not foul deeds done to a person... but rather that tragedy is irresolvable conflict. Both sides/ideas are right. Plot involves fragmentary reality, and it might involve composite reality. Fragmentary reality is the view of the individual. Composite reality is the community or state view. Fragmentary reality is always set against composite reality. Virginia Woolf did this by creating fragmentary monologues and for a while this was all the rage in literature. She was a genius. In the hands of the merely talented it came off like gibberish."

"I also look at people like Rita Mae Brown and some of the writers who were supported by small presses that have switched over to mainstream presses. That's all right-that's their choice. But the fact is that I'm sensitive to the publishing history of dykes and women of color. It was women who put my work in print and I'm not going to turn my back on them. Ideally, I would like to do both: publish with a small press and enlarge my audience by publishing with a mainstream press."

"I had managed to rationalize my shock and dismay when I found the narrator of Ruby fruit Jungle describing the fat Jewish girl Barbara Spangenthau as someone who "always had her hand in her pants playing with herself, and worse, she stank. Until I was fifteen I thought that being Jewish meant you walked around with your hand in your pants." In 1974, as an emerging lesbian, I didn't want to admit that the movement's leading fiction writer was basing her humor on age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes. I simply couldn't afford to take it in. So I kept silent. In those early years of struggle it seemed unworthy to make a fuss. And worse-it seemed divisive. I could not yet claim my anger. I wanted too much to belong"

"In the early 1970s, women started national networks of small presses, such as Daughters Inc., which published Rita Mae Brown's groundbreaking lesbian novel Rubyfruit Jungle."

"The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four Americans is suffering from some form of mental illness. Think of your three best friends. If they're okay, then it's you."

"Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again but expecting different results."

"And they picketh it up and laideth it in a Ziploc bag"

"On airlines, so many passengers' faces are buried in John Grisham books, they could be complimentary copies for Grisham Airlines."

"FYI: The Summer of Gay has been extended into the Year of the Queer. Another heads up: Mad Vow Disease, once limited to wholesome, unimpeachable gay couples earnestly seeking to take on the rights and responsibilities of marriage, has jumped the pen and crossed into the general population."

"Like red meat thrown before the Atkins crowd in the Republican Party, the initiative would teach problem solving, negotiating, and listening skills, which might then trickle up to the Bush Administration."

"Like those itinerant clerics who traveled during the summer months and took over for vacationing priests, I hope to help out this summer in Provincetown, but without the pedophilia."

"The Administration's policy on women is often hard to see because it is written in the font size of pharmaceutical ads."

"When the Lord of the Wedding Rings held his no-questions-asked press conference, he said he was sorely "troubled." At last, I thought, an admission. But no, he wasn't talking about his mental condition."

"Every now and then, when you're onstage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live."

"I've been away from Hollywood so long, I feel like a spider on a wedding cake."

"I think the purpose of the actor is to illuminate the human condition. When you go to a film and you see a good actor, it's because you identify with them—you know what they're feeling—and a good actor draws, I believe, from their own experience. And when it's true for him, it's true for you. If a director imposes a performance or you try to mimic somebody, it can be funny or brilliant, but it isn't moving."

"A pretty face is a passport."

"The White House used to belong to the American people. At least that's what I learned from history books and from covering every president starting with John F. Kennedy. But now the 201-year-old Executive Mansion belongs only to a select, elitist group of people, including top government officials, members of Congress and the press corps. They and some others, all of whom are screened in advance, are welcome. But most people are not — not anymore."

"We were never hyphenated as Arab-Americans. We were American, and I have always rejected the hyphen and I believe all assimilated immigrants should not be designated ethnically. Or separated, of course, by race, or creed either. These are trends that ever try to divide us as a people."

"At the earlier briefing, Ari, you said that the President deplored the taking of innocent lives. Does that apply to all innocent lives in the world? And I have a follow-up... My follow-up is, why does he want to drop bombs on innocent Iraqis? …"

"All presidents rail against the press. It goes with the turf."

"This is the worst president ever. He is the worst president in all of American history."

"I don't speechify. I know the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. And that's what I ask. But they get mad at the straight line. I just want to ask a tough question."

"[I]t took a lot of chutzpah on the part of a lot of newspaper women who came here in the twenties, thirties, forties, and fifties to break down the barriers against women reporters. And we couldn’t even become members of the National Press Corps until 1971 — that’s pretty late in the game. We got the vote, which we should’ve been born with, in 1920. Everything we’ve had to struggle for — it’s ridiculous."

"We've got to break through the wall of secrecy. It's America's fate."

"It's the arrogance of power. "We're in charge. It's our White House. What the hell are you doing here?" Basically toward the Press. "How dare you question anything we do?" They don't understand that the presidential news conference is the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned. If he's not questioned, he can rule by edict; by government order. He can be a monarch. He can be a dictator, and who is to find out? No. He should be questioned and he should always be able to willingly reply and answer to all questions because these aren't our questions. They're the people's questions."

"Every President hates the Press. Every president thinks that all information that comes to the White House is their private preserve after they all promise an open administration on the campaign trail, but some are even more secretive than others. Some want to lock down everything."

"Both Blair and Bush have been found lacking in their credibility. Usually by this time a government would have fallen. I covered two presidents, LBJ and Nixon, who could no longer convince, persuade, or govern, once people had decided they had no credibility, but we seem to be more tolerant now of what I think we should not tolerate."

"Well it wasn't a formal hanging. It was kind of subtle. I had covered him … his first press conference. He dropped down into the press room and started taking questions and everyone asked about the tax cut and I sort of — Ari Fleischer later told me I blindsided him because I said to him, "Mister President, why don't you respect the wall of separation between church and state?" Well, there's a video of him that is so funny. He jerked back as if he had been hit! I mean both barrels! And he said, "I do respect—" I said, "Well if you did, why would you have a religious office in the White House?" (I'm exaggerating, but anyway) and "you're a secular official." And he said "I am secular." Well, anyway, I got a call from Ari after that. After that there was a formal news conference and I did ask him a Middle East question and it wasn't the question per se. They just don't like my boorishness."

"Get into the game!"

"You don't spread democracy through the barrel of a gun."

"I'm a liberal, I was born a liberal, and I will be a liberal till the day I die."

";Helen Thomas"

":I think American policy is pro‐Israel. If you take a vote in Congress, maybe you might get five people vote against any further aid to Israel or to continue its occupation. But that's about it. They control— They have vast power."

":Who's they?"

":The Zionists."

"I mean, they (Obama admistration) have a guy like Dennis Ross at the White House now, who's always been a part of the Israel lobby. They put him in charge of the whole Muslim world."

";David Nesenoff"

":Any comments on Israel? We're asking everybody today, any comments on Israel?"

":Tell 'em to get the hell out of Palestine."

":Ooh. Any better comments than that?"

":Remember, these people are occupied, and it's their land, not German and not Poland's."

":So where should they go? What should they do?"

":They could go home."

":Where is home?"

":Poland. Germany.—"

":So the Jews— You're saying Jews should go back to Poland and Germany."

":—and America and everywhere else. Why push people out of there who are lived there for centuries? See?"

":Now, are you familiar of the history of that region, and what took place?"

":Very much. I'm of Arab background."

"I deeply regret my comments I made last week regarding the Israelis and the Palestinians. They do not reflect my heart-felt belief that peace will come to the Middle East only when all parties recognize the need for mutual respect and tolerance. May that day come soon."

"I paid the price for that, but it was worth it, to speak the truth. The Zionists have to understand that's their country, too. Palestinians were there long before any European Zionists."

"I can call a president of the United States anything in the book but I can't touch Israel, which has Jewish-only roads in the West Bank. No American would tolerate that -- white-only roads… We are owned by the propagandists against the Arabs. We are owned by propagandists against the Arabs. There's no question about that. Congress, the White House, and Hollywood, Wall Street, are owned by the Zionists. No question in my opinion. They put their money where their mouth is…We're being pushed into a wrong direction in every way."

"If we could get them back to the '67 borders it certainly would be a triumph, but they're not about to move anywhere. They keep taking and keep bulldozing homes on the West Bank. They have Jewish-only roads. They would never tolerate that here...My view is that you should not create another nation in somebody else's country, and the Palestinians were 85 percent in the majority, until they began the immigration for the Jews and for the Zionists because they had designated Jerusalem as their home, that God gave it to them. Well, I mean, that's— what God? Who? And so forth. Everything like that is just very debatable. Jews have been persecuted all over the world. There's no question about that. Certainly the Nazis—. I mean, it's too horrifying to think of what they did and the silence in the world when it was happening. At the same time, they aren't the only ones who fought in World War II. I had— my brothers, two brothers, were there. All my relatives. Every American was involved. So it isn't a question of the Holocaust was a simple thing going on. The Russians lost 25 million people."

"Not a secret. It’s very open."

"I don't have to answer questions from Helen Thomas."

"Helen Thomas, who I used to consider a close friend and who I used to respect, has showed herself to be an anti-Semitic bigot."

"I don't want to beat an old horse, but it's a bit unfair to compare Helen Thomas to Hezbollah. Clearly, Helen only endorses religious cleansing; she doesn't openly support genocide."

"For several decades, Helen Thomas covered the White House as a reporter for United Press International.... and when the specter of war grew large in 2002, she didn’t hold back. "It’s bombs away for Iraq and on our civil liberties if Bush and his cronies get their way," Thomas said... during a speech at MIT. Looking back on a long career, she said: "I censored myself for fifty years when I was a reporter.""

"I do love you though — and can love you without kissing you every time I see you and I hope you understand that."

"I've always thought of being in love as being willing to do anything for the other person — starve to buy them bread and not mind living in Siberia with them — and I've always thought that every minute away from them would be hell — so looking at it that [way] I guess I'm not in love with you."

"A newspaper reported I spend $30,000 a year buying Paris clothes and that women hate me for it. I couldn’t spend that much unless I wore sable underwear."

"If you bungle raising your children I don't think whatever else you do well matters very much."

"All these people come to see the White House and they see practically nothing that dates back before 1948. Every boy who comes here should see things that develop his sense of history. For the girls, the house should look beautiful and lived-in. They should see what a fire in the fireplace and pretty flowers can do for a house; the White House rooms should give them a sense of all that. Everything in the White House must have a reason for being there. It would be sacrilege merely to "redecorate" it -- a word I hate. It must be restored -- and that has nothing to do with decoration. That is a question of scholarship."

"I want to be there when he dies."

"He didn’t even have the satisfaction of being killed for civil rights... it had to be some silly little Communist."

"Dear God, please take care of your servant John Fitzgerald Kennedy."

"One must not let oneself be overwhelmed by sadness."

"I want to take this opportunity to express my appreciation for the hundreds of thousands of messages, nearly eight hundred thousand in all, which my children and I have received over the past few weeks. The knowledge of the affection in which my husband was held by all of you has sustained me and the warmth of these tributes is something I shall never forget. Whenever I can bear to, I read them. All his bright light’s gone from the world. All of you who have written to me know how much we all loved him and that he returned that love in full measure."

"I loathe the French. There's not one French person I can think of except—maybe two very simple people. Maybe Boudin, who's so un-French. You know, they're really not very nice. They're all for themselves."

"Now, I think that I should have known that he was magic all along. I did know it — but I should have guessed that it would be too much to ask to grow old with and see our children grow up together. So now, he is a legend when he would have preferred to be a man."

"One man can make a difference and every man should try."

"A camel makes an elephant feel like a jet plane."

"If they're killing Kennedys, then my children are targets ... I want to get out of this country."

"We know you understand that even though people may be well known they still hold in their hearts the emotions of a simple person for the moments that are the most important of those we know on earth — birth, marriage, death. We wish our wedding to be a private moment in the little chapel among the cypresses of Skorpios."

"You were so kind to us yesterday. Never have I seen such magnanimity and such tenderness. Can you imagine the gift you gave me? To return to the White House privately with my little ones while they are still young enough to rediscover their childhood — with you both as guides — and with your daughters, such extraordinary young women. What a tribute to have brought them up like that in the limelight. I pray I can do half the same with my Caroline. It was good to see her exposed to their example, and John to their charm! You spoiled us beyond belief . . . I have never seen the White House look so perfect. There is no hidden corner of it that is not beautiful now."

"If we don’t care about our past we can’t have very much hope for our future."

"Whenever I was upset by something in the papers, [Jack] always told me to be more tolerant, like a horse flicking away flies in the summer."

"Minimum information given with maximum politeness."

"It looks like it’s been furnished by discount stores."

"The one thing I do not want to be called is First Lady. It sounds like a saddle horse."

"You are about to have your first experience with a Greek lunch. I will kill you if you pretend to like it."

"It was a very spasmodic courtship, conducted mainly at long distance with a great clanking of coins in dozens of phone booths."

"They’re stealing our sky!"

"What is sad for women of my generation is that they weren’t supposed to work if they had families. What were they to do when the children were grown — watch raindrops coming down the windowpane?"

"One of the things I like about publishing is that you don't promote the editor — you promote the book and the author."

"To think that I very nearly didn’t go... What if I’d been here — out riding in Virginia or somewhere — Thank God I went with him."

"The children have been a wonderful gift to me, and I’m thankful to have once again seen our world through their eyes. They restore my faith in the family’s future."

"The trouble with me is that I’m an outsider. And that’s a very hard thing to be in American life."

"The river of sludge will go on and on. It isn’t about me."

"Aristotle Onassis rescued me at a moment when my life was engulfed with shadows. He brought me into a world where one could find both happiness and love. We lived through many beautiful experiences together which cannot be forgotten, and for which I will be eternally grateful."

"I think my biggest achievement is that, after going through a rather difficult time, I consider myself comparatively sane."

"The deep desire to inspire people, to take an active part in the life of the country … attracts our best people to political life … We should all do something to right the wrongs that we see and not just complain about them. We owe that to our country."

"You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up. The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones. While big men know the need for self-control and restraint, little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride."

"No one in the world could have ever been like you were yesterday -- except maybe Bobby -- We are going home now -- Your phone was busy."

"You know that anything -- Stas will take little Bobby to Africa -- I'll take them around the world + to the moon + back -- anything to help you + them now and always."

"We have known so much & shared & lost so much together—Even if it isn’t the way you wish now—I hope that bond of love and pain will never be cut."

"There'd been the biggest motorcade from the airport. Hot. Wild. Like Mexico and Vienna. The sun was so strong in our faces. I couldn't put on sunglasses... Then we saw this tunnel ahead, I thought it would be cool in the tunnel, I thought if you were on the left the sun wouldn't get into your eyes..."

"They were gunning the motorcycles. There were these little backfires. There was one noise like that. I thought it was a backfire. Then next I saw Connally grabbing his arms and saying "no, no, no, no, no," with his fist beating. Then Jack turned and I turned. All I remember was a blue-gray building up ahead. Then Jack turned back so neatly, his last expression was so neat... you know that wonderful expression he had when they'd ask him a question about one of the ten million pieces they have in a rocket, just before he'd answer. He looked puzzled, then he slumped forward. He was holding out his hand … I could see a piece of his skull coming off. It was flesh-colored, not white — he was holding out his hand … I can see this perfectly clean piece detaching itself from his head. Then he slumped in my lap, his blood and his brains were in my lap … Then Clint Hill [the Secret Service man], he loved us, he made my life so easy, he was the first man in the car … We all lay down in the car … And I kept saying, Jack, Jack, Jack, and someone was yelling "he's dead, he's dead." All the ride to the hospital I kept bending over him, saying "Jack, Jack, can you hear me, I love you, Jack.""

"His head was so beautiful. I tried to hold the top of his head down, maybe I could keep it in... but I knew he was dead."

"When they carried Jack in, Hill threw his coat over Jack's head, and I held his head to throw the coat over it. It wasn't repulsive to me for one moment — nothing was repulsive to me —"

"These big Texas interns kept saying, "Mrs. Kennedy, you come with us", they wanted to take me away from him... But I said "I'm not leaving"… Dave Powers came running to me at the hospital, crying when he saw me, my legs, my hands were covered with his brains... When Dave saw this he burst out weeping... I said "I'm not going to leave him, I'm not going to leave him"… I was standing outside in this narrow corridor... ten minutes later this big policeman brought me a chair."

"I said, "I want to be in there when he dies"… so Burkeley forced his way into the operating room and said, "It's her prerogative, it's her prerogative..." and I got in, there were about forty people there. Dr. Perry wanted to get me out. But I said "It's my husband, his blood, his brains are all over me.""

"I held his hand all the time the priest was saying extreme unction."

"The ring was all blood-stained... so I put the ring on Jack's finger... and then I kissed his hand..."

"Everytime we got off the plane that day, three times they gave me the yellow roses of Texas. But in Dallas they gave me red roses. I thought how funny, red roses — so all the seat was full of blood and red roses."

"But there's this one thing I wanted to say... I'm so ashamed of myself... When Jack quoted something, it was usually classical... no, don't protect me now... I kept saying to Bobby, I've got to talk to somebody, I've got to see somebody, I want to say this one thing, it's been almost an obsession with me, all I keep thinking of is this line from a musical comedy, it's been an obsession with me... At night before we'd go to sleep... we had an old Victrola. Jack liked to play some records. His back hurt, the floor was so cold. I'd get out of bed at night and play it for him, when it was so cold getting out of bed... on a Victrola ten years old — and the song he loved most came at the very end of this record, the last side of Camelot, sad Camelot... "Don't let it be forgot, that once there was a spot, for one brief shining moment that was known as Camelot."...There'll never be another Camelot again..."

"Do you know what I think of history? … For a while I thought history was something that bitter old men wrote. But Jack loved history so... No one'll ever know everything about Jack. But … history made Jack what he was … this lonely, little sick boy … scarlet fever … this little boy sick so much of the time, reading in bed, reading history … reading the Knights of the Round Table … and he just liked that last song. Then I thought, for Jack history was full of heroes. And if it made him this way, if it made him see the heroes, maybe other little boys will see. Men are such a combination of good and bad … He was such a simple man. But he was so complex, too. Jack had this hero idea of history, the idealistic view, but then he had that other side, the pragmatic side... his friends were all his old friends; he loved his Irish Mafia."

"History!... Everybody kept saying to me to put a cold towel around my head and wipe the blood off... later, I saw myself in the mirror; my whole face spattered with blood and hair... I wiped it off with Kleenex... History! … I thought, no one really wants me there. Then one second later I thought, why did I wash the blood off? I should have left it there, let them see what they've done... If I'd just had the blood and caked hair when they took the picture … Then later I said to Bobby — what's the line between history and drama? I should have kept the blood on."

"Jack so obviously demanded from a woman-a relationship between a man and a woman where a man would be the leader and a woman would be his wife. With Adlai Stevenson you could have another relationship-where you know, he'd be sort of be sweet and you could talk, but you wouldn't ever,.. I've always thought women who were scared of sex loved Adlai."

"An aim in life is the only fortune worth finding."

"She changed the White House from a plastic to a crystal bowl."

"She was as close to an American princess as the nation can remember. But she never lived happily ever after with a man who truly loved her."

"Perhaps she never expected love when she married two remarkable, charismatic and powerful men. Perhaps she settled for too little love. Perhaps she got from her husbands what she may really have wanted-power, money, celebrity, what appeared to be security."

"Jackie endured it all, even when the women involved include Mafia moll Judith Exner to whom JFK gave expensive gifts, even when some of the relationships turned out to be more than half-hour stands, even when her husband's infidelity was widely known in Washington, even when some of the encounters took place in the White house itself."

"When JFK was assassinated, Jackie secured his place in history by her brave and resolute conduct. When her death was announced, the first images in the minds of all of us and on all the TV stations were of her shocked face as she stood by Lyndon Johnson at his swearing in Dallas, her blood-stained pink suit she refused to change, her haunted face as she walked beside her husband's casket."

"It was Jacqueline Kennedy's face, as much as his death, that broke the nation's heart. She became an American folk hero, an enduring fascination."

"For Aristotle Onassis, Jacqueline Kennedy was the ultimate trophy wife, the world's most famous woman. For her, he may have represented money, security and relief from the permanent First Widow status imposed on her by the public and by her Kennedy in-laws."

"The public knows few personal details about Jackie's last years, as she wished. But we have never lost our fascination with her, our appreciation of her role as First Lady, our caring about her and our hopes that she had found happiness and love."

"Admittedly, Melania Trump looked stunning this morning as she walked into St. John’s Church, wearing a head-to-toe baby blue outfit designed by the reigning king of American sportswear, Ralph Lauren. The knee-length dress, high-necked bolero jacket, matching gloves and stiletto pumps all convey a message of class and elegance, drawing immediate – and likely intentional – comparisons to Jackie O., who wore the same color Oleg Cassini suit fifty-six years ago today: January 20, 1961, the day her husband John F. Kennedy was inaugurated."

"In her first major statement as the de facto First Lady, Trump has made the decision to echo the styling of a former First Lady: one who arguably had the largest fashion influence of any American President’s wife until, perhaps, Michelle Obama. That choice is simultaneously safe and questionable – safe, because no one doubts that the Oleg Cassini suit worn by Jacqueline Kennedy represents a key historical fashion moment and questionable, because Trump has already had issues with, um…distinguishing herself from those women who came before her."

"Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis, the glamorous wife who was beside John F. Kennedy during his presidency and when he was shot, was for 33 years the most famous woman on Earth."

"She was first lady in a time — which has not quite ended — when many Americans were put off if a president’s wife seemed too involved in his political career. In almost every presidential marriage you will find a first lady who, while she serves, insists that all politics is left to the president — but when viewed in history, she turns out to have been a significant influence on that presidency. Jackie is no exception."

"She lived through and reflected a crucial period in U.S. history in which women moved into the mainstream of American professional life and redefined their roles."

"As idealised Jackie Kennedy morphed into debased Jackie Onassis, and Camelot gave way to Watergate, we ceased to believe in the Eden of the Kennedy era, its heroine descending into postlapsarian guise. Her very costume spoke of this fall: America’s patrician princess, all hats, gloves, and ball gowns, was reborn as a permanently sunglassed plutocrat, skulking about in flip-flops, queen of Skorpios only."

"This was a former First Lady who gave no interviews for 30 years; a book editor who stalwartly refused to pen an autobiography; a woman who excommunicated friends if they spoke about her and fought to suppress unauthorised revelations. It was an irony that while, as Jackie Kennedy, she embraced the most public of public lives, by nature she was the epitome of the private individual, poised and glamorous, yet reticent and aloof."

"Jackie has been perceived as a sphynx who very definitely possessed a secret. Around this faux blue-blooded beauty spiralled a web of myth and rumour; fantasies she did not deign to respond to that thus took root as fact."

"People who tried to say no to Jackie found that she would go to great lengths to outwit them."

"Before her marriage, she worked as a photojournalist for the Washington Times-Herald, interviewing the likes of Richard Nixon and reporting on the coronation of Elizabeth II. In later life, she took jobs at Viking Press and Doubleday, where she helped edit Michael Jackson’s 1988 autobiography, Moonwalk. But her greatest achievement came in those days after Dallas, when the queen of the White House abruptly made herself over as its architect and myth-maker, the equivalent of Guinevere sitting down to write Le Morte d’Arthur."

"Kennedy of course is best known for her chic fashion sense, something I'm sure Melania Trump admires, but she was more plugged into her husband's administration than she's given credit for: She knew about his plan to get rid of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and she was a sounding board for him during the Cuban missile crisis."

"Recently, while channel-surfing late one night, I stumbled upon the 1964 comedy "Kisses for My President" in which a hapless Fred MacMurray struggles to cope with being married to the first female president, played by Polly Bergen. Things run amok until Bergen's character gets pregnant and decides to resign the presidency so that she can take care of their family. This ending, absurd to 21st-century audiences, would have made sense to Jackie Kennedy and Eleanor Roosevelt because to them, the concept of a female president was absurd in and of itself. The idea of a first gentleman would have been preposterous."

"She even apologized to JFK before he became president and told him, “I’m sorry for you that I’m such a dud.” But when her husband asked her to stop wearing head scarfs because she looked too much like a celebrity, she stood her ground. She refused to change her style and soon millions of American women were copying her. It remains to be seen with our current first lady whether her willful approach will help her or hurt her."

"She had a very acute sense of her image as first lady and how she wanted to use her image to promote her husband's administration and his ideals."

"On duty as First Lady, Mrs. Kennedy’s impact was profound—a visual metaphor for the President’s youthful, internationally minded administration, and a symbol of a new era of cultural sophistication at the White House. For her formal daytime ensembles, she took a leaf from Britain’s royal dressmakers and their clients, avoiding prints and instead using brilliant solid colors and bold lines that helped her to be easily distinguished in a crowd. Her majestic, strong-silhouetted evening gowns, meanwhile, showcased her statuesque figure and married French grandeur to a thoroughly American breeziness."

"Throughout, her disciplined elegance revealed an equestrian’s fastidious approach to dressing. Off duty, meanwhile, Jacqueline Kennedy was every inch the liberated sixties woman, barefoot in capri pants and sportif tops that were always chosen with an eye to simplicity of line."

"During the Onassis years, a jet-set glamour crept in as she shielded herself from the paparazzi gaze behind her trademark bug-eyed sunglasses. That glamor was well-served by her friend Valentino’s sleek day clothes and romantic evening looks. As an esteemed literary editor in the seventies, she dressed the part in a working-woman wardrobe that was practical yet faultlessly stylish."

"For what would prove to be one of her last public appearances, for the American Ballet Theatre gala at the Metropolitan Opera House in 1993, Jacqueline Kennedy wore a dress by Herrera of white crepe with rhinestone buttons. During the fitting, Mrs. Kennedy Onassis subtly altered the placement of those buttons from the original runway model, streamlining the effect and proving her enduring taste for perfectionism in all things."

"Jackie Kennedy grabbed the public’s attention with her chic, yet simple fashion sense. From boxy Chanel suits to Halston pillbox hats, she reshaped fashion’s view of conservative clothes and left a noteworthy fashion legacy behind."

"The Jackie Look, or what I call the A-line look, created a worldwide impression of such dimension that she became the First Lady of the world. There wasn’t one lady on the planet who didn’t want to dress like her, comb their hair like her, walk and talk like her. And it was the first time an American designer could influence world trends."

"Our Jackie is embodied forever in that bloodstained pink suit. She bore the grief of a nation with such dignity, and then guarded her privacy until she died in 1994 at age 64. This Jackie is harshly judgmental, dispensing petty opinions that say as much about her as they do the objects of her disdain."

"I want you to know something else, too, that I’m grateful for. In January of 1992 Jackie came to a fundraiser for me when I was running fifth in New Hampshire, and reached out to my wife and to my daughter in ways that I will never forget. One month after, her son had also come to an event for me, when I think I was running sixth in New Hampshire."

"God gave her very great gifts and imposed upon her great burdens. She bore them all with dignity and grace and uncommon common sense. May the flame she lit so long ago burn ever brighter here and always brighter in our hearts. God bless you friend, and farewell."

"I can't put it any better than Jackie Kennedy did after the Cuban Missile Crisis. She said that what worried President Kennedy during that very dangerous time was that a war might be started — not by big men with self-control and restraint, but by little men — the ones moved by fear and pride."

"Like many fellow fashionistas, Donahue is rushing to cram Obama's 5-foot-11-inch frame into the mold left by her timeless predecessor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. The trouble, historians say, is that it's a lousy fit."

"Kennedy was the epitome of 1960s haute couture. Her style was aspirational, unattainable. Obama is more of a fashion populist. It's hard to imagine Kennedy, in her pillbox hat and leopard-skin coat, dishing about shopping at J.Crew."

"It was in those brief, heady years or perhaps it was really just one year, during the campaign and election of 1960—when John F. Kennedy and his young, beautiful wife were fast becoming national and then international celebrities that the legend of Jackie was born."

"Looking back now, even in the light of all we know about her fraught, strained, "storybook" marriage to an obsessively philandering husband, there does seem to be something special about Jackie Kennedy. Maybe it's just that the camera loved her. Maybe she was so intriguing to so many people simply because, set beside the other prominent women in Washington, DC, in the early 1960s, she was young (barely in her 30s), chic and, with her Irish and French ancestry, indefinably and refreshingly "exotic.""

"But whatever the reasons behind her appeal, and however concrete or ineffable they might be, the fact remains that for millions of women around the globe, across generations, the woman in the White House in the Oleg Cassini outfits (made expressly for her), throwing formal dinner parties for artists, writers, scientists and diplomats, traveling the world, was the face not only of a new era but of an utterly new type of American woman. She was, somehow, at once warm and elegant, youthful and sophisticated, fun-loving and serious—and on top of it all, self-deprecatingly funny."

"Throughout her life, despite the many tragedies she endured (loosing a husband and a baby boy) her poise and style endured. We adore you Jackie O., you are a role model in every sense!"

"For her it was imperative that everybody who visited the White House should see a house that was beautiful and lived in and that represented so much of American history."

"Shortly after her husband’s inauguration, she appointed interior designers to aid her transformation introducing warm tones of strong colours such as blue, yellow and red, and applying geometric symmetry in the positioning of furniture to enhance the magnificence of the arched windows and architectural panelling. She transformed the once stuffy interior into one that exuded grace, elegance and refined formality."

"Her iconic status really came after President Kennedy's death when she withdrew from public life and was rarely heard from publicly. The Jacqueline Kennedy on these tapes fits, I think, with what we might have expected if we think of her from the vantage point of her White House years."

"These comments, which sound so antiquated to modern ears, reflect, obviously, Mrs. Kennedy's perspective at this moment in her life. Undoubtedly they were derived in part from her background, her class, her sensibility. But they also capture views that were shared by many in her generation."

"At the same time, the tapes themselves are replete with examples of Mrs. Kennedy's independent thinking and ironically, she describes again and again incidents when her views diverged from those of her husband. Her comments on women in politics, in fact, follows her observation that she found it difficult to forgive politicians with whom JFK had crossed swords while her husband saw such conflicts as very much a part of the business of politics."

"I think it would be very cynical — and completely wrong — to see her remarks on these tapes as calculated myth making. There is an off the cuff quality to these conversations, a rambling, even at times disjointed mood that shows Kennedy in a reflective mood. Much of what we hear is quite unvarnished. The conversations range over several days and many hours. The sound bites that have gotten the most media attention were stripped of their context and when that is provided, as it is in the tapes, one gets a sense of a person who intensely enjoyed some of her experience in the White House and was overwhelmed by and even abhorred some of what she saw. She does not, it is true, share with Schlesinger any doubts about or criticism of her husband. That isn't surprising."

"Mrs. Kennedy's dignity in the face of that tragedy moved millions of people and will make her, I suspect, someone who many will always admire. It is, in the end, better to see our presidents — and everyone else around us — as human beings than to engage in an idealization that really diminishes our own agency and sense of responsibility."

"She was playing a long game, and against all odds she’s still winning it. She had her eye on what she grandly called History, a concept large enough to encompass both her interest in 18th-century France and the necessity of maintaining a complicated fiction—at once face-saving and humiliating—about the nature of her marriage. It’s not a tissue of lies, but it is a tissue, one that has been rent so many times that it should be nothing more than dust motes by now, but she was a woman who brought every one of her formidable gifts to bear when it came to the subject of John Kennedy; and we’re no match for her."

"And Jackie was herself a sexual sophisticate. She hung illustrations from the Kama Sutra in the dining room of one of her country houses; she was self-confident enough to include pretty young women on the guest lists of her private parties because she knew they invigorated her husband; she understood that she had married a man with a vivid sexual past, and certainly wouldn’t have wanted it any other way."

"Jackie was very modern; her spirit was modern, she was a new image for America because he was a young president."

"It was not the same relationship or friendship that I had with Audrey (Hepburn). The American people felt emotion for Jackie, but they preferred to have an American couturier design her dresses when they came to France for a state visit."

"It’s certainly not the Jackie that we knew later on. By then, she’s a different woman."

"Famous people, in conversation with strangers, will often struggle to point out the space between what we expect of them and who they really are—and that, of course, is another way of drawing attention to our expectation, and so to their celebrity. Mrs. Onassis paid new people the infinitely more difficult compliment of assuming that the baggage you both brought to the table was of infinitely less importance than the new gifts you might take away from it."

"Undeniably one of the greatest style icons of the last century, Jackie's elegance and class were an inspiration to millions."

"Not only was Jackie deeply loved and adored, but she set the bar for First Lady fashion. Decades after her time in office, we still reflect on her timeless look and countless articles have been dedicated to copying her style."

"One of the reasons Jackie was much loved was for her all-American style. Although she constantly had her eye on the Paris and Milan catwalks, she worked closely with designer Oleg Cassini to interpret looks."

"The key to her lasting influence of course was her timeless elegance, as relevant today as it was in her hey day."

"Although Jackie had a timeless style she injected a panache and flair into her outfits that gave them her unique stamp. Her staples however, and the accessories we remember her for, are her oversize sunglasses, strands of pearls and silk scarves."

"Starting with that powder-blue inauguration ensemble, plenty of first-lady watchers have noticed that Melania Trump’s fashion choices have seemed one pillbox hat away from copying Jackie Kennedy, perhaps the biggest style icon to occupy the White House."

"Everything about her high society upbringing predicated a charmed life."

"At age 31, she brought a sense of youth and fashion to Washington, making the pillbox hat the rage and redecorating a stodgy White House. Yet the image that remains seared in the national consciousness is of the First Lady cradling her fallen husband’s head in her lap, her pink suit splattered with his blood."

"Like no other First Lady before her, Onassis cut a mod figure, with Oleg Cassini outfits, Givenchy gowns and the pillbox hats that topped her bouffant hairdo."

"Though it must have pained her at times, she remained the perfect political wife."

"As the years went by, Jackie O somewhere along the way crossed the line from widowed, beloved First Lady to pop icon."

"She's regal; she's elegant as ever; she is an everlasting mystery. I think she's elevated the human spirit in this country. If there were more Jackie Kennedys around, this would be a better place in which to live. I find her to be a very noble person."

"Whenever we took her anywhere, she'd immediately be recognized, and before we knew it there would be a swarm of people gawking, and often approaching her to shake her hand. She would smile graciously and offer a polite greeting, but as soon as we were alone, she'd quip, "You'd think I was someone important, for heaven's sake.""

"Of all the first ladies we’ve had, Jackie Kennedy stands out. She changed the role. She was elegant and sophisticated. She took an intense interest in the historical furnishings of the White House. She brought in paintings and furniture that represented the past. She brought entertainers that had not been there before."

"Michael Beschloss, who has steered this frail craft of last-sip publishing into harbor, may have overstepped himself as a historian by saying that the tapes show Jackie as a major player in the Kennedy administration. But they certainly make it difficult if not impossible to accept her at her own paradoxical valuation, as merely a self-effacing hostess and decorator."

"If the subject were being a major player in establishing the popular reputation of the Kennedy administration, that would be an entirely different story. With amazingly professional velocity, she seized control of the image-making process and soon had an entire cadre of historians and super-journos honing and burnishing the script."

"For some people, the 1996 public auction of Mrs. Kennedy’s private effects, down to the most trivial and tangential (such as her Hermès hairbrush), was when the wrong scent began somehow to cling to the business. For others, it was Caroline Kennedy’s release in 2001 of a volume fragrantly titled The Best-Loved Poems of Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, which one hopes would not have seduced the incautious purchaser into supposing that the First Lady had ever extended herself into verse."

"I draw so much inspiration from her. How she influenced style, how she influenced bringing so much to the White House when she was there. So many artists were supported by her and definitely with everything she went through, she was so focused on keeping her children safe, protected and loved and really fulfilling their own dreams and she had such an elegance."

"First the world will call me Bouvier, hey Then I'll change to Jackie K. After my date with tragedy I'll let Aristotle take care of me I want to be Jackie Onassis, oh yeah...."

"If history is any guide, she might be sort of a Jackie Kennedy type, a well-dressed woman who will be seen as popular in the women's magazines but largely stays quiet and on the sidelines in terms of her public image."

"I looked at her. Mrs. Kennedy’s dress was stained with blood. One leg was almost entirely covered with it and her right glove was caked, it was caked with blood — her husband’s blood. Somehow that was one of the most poignant sights — that immaculate woman exquisitely dressed, and caked in blood."

"Today, November 22, 2016, marks the 53rd anniversary of John F. Kennedy’s assassination. His legacy of American exceptionalism lives on, much in part due to the words of his widow, Jacqueline Kennedy, who made it her mission to keep her husband’s memory stamped firmly in the minds of Americans and global citizens for years to come."

"Jackie’s insistent push of this theme exemplifies her keen understanding of public diplomacy, and the importance of maintaining a favorable public image in the eyes of world."

"She knew what must be done to keep John F. Kennedy’s memory alive. She must glorify his work, and so she did. But, what she didn’t realize was that her own great legacy was one to be remembered too."

"Jackie's interest in the public opinion and legacy building of the Kennedy Administration didn’t begin only after JFK’s assassination; she was actually a champion public diplomat during her time as first lady, using global public opinion in her favor as she won the hearts of people everywhere. She frequently traveled around the world meeting with various government officials and members of the female press corps professing the image of American idealism. This successful use of soft power set a dynamic for future first ladies to come."

"During her tenure, Jackie traveled to various countries, and through her comprehensive knowledge of the arts, literature, history, and of course, fashion, Jackie Kennedy was a public diplomat the likes of which America had never seen."

"On this day, we remember JFK and his tenure as president during some of the most critical and tumultuous days in our history—the Civil Right Movement, Bay of Pigs, Cuban Missile Crisis, Vietnam. His steady hand and diplomatic touch eased tensions around the world and ensured that his legacy for promoting democratization, equality and hope would live on. But Jacqueline Kennedy will also go down in history—not just for her string of pearls or pillbox hat, or even for her famous pink suit; but for creating a dominant soft power dynamic in American politics, and proving to foreign audiences everywhere that knowledge, appreciation and understanding of other cultures can forge a lasting bond between nations that improve foreign relations immensely."

"My mother was a woman of tremendous courage. She worked very hard to do her best every day of her life, whether it was in raising her children, being First Lady or working as a book editor."

"She made a rare and noble contribution to the American spirit. But for us, most of all she was a magnificent wife, mother, grandmother, sister, aunt, and friend. She graced our history. And for those of us who knew and loved her, she graced our lives."

"She said she's crazy about Ted, but she's known for years that I should have done it fifteen years ago. She was so supportive. She even suggested I use her New York lawyer. If Jackie recommends him and says he's distinguished, he must be good."

"She said I should look out for myself."

"Jackie also told me that she wishes she had given me this advice before and maybe I wouldn't have gotten so sick. But back then, fifteen years ago, I probably wouldn't have been able to take her advice."

"I do not think it altogether inappropriate to introduce myself to this audience. I am the man who accompanied Jacqueline Kennedy to Paris, and I have enjoyed it."

"If I had to live my life over again, I would have a different father, a different wife, and a different religion."

"My mother would be very happy today."

"She was present at a scene of martyrdom and an intimate witness, vulnerable to that moment, escaping death herself. It sealed her fate as part of a tragic, fascinating spectacle that played in millions of minds."

"The worst thing in her life that could possibly happen, happened. And it happened in broad daylight in front of everyone. It was always happening in front of everyone, a ghastly carnival replay of the worst thing that can happen."

"By this time, there could be no doubt that Jackie had survived and thrived. McNamara, by contrast, was a disappointed and defeated man. Jackie, after numerous failed attempts, had finally succeeded in fashioning a new life."

"As she had done so many times in the decades since Dallas, she again grappled with the randomness of the world and the abruptness of tragedy."

"Jackie loved in Jack the man he wanted to be, and David was the man helping him, in her eyes, to be the man Jack wanted to be."

"In the late 1960s, Jacqueline Kennedy was, perhaps, the world’s most famous widow, but few had access to her feelings, either in grief or in the public eye."

"Jackie Kennedy's letters underline the behind-the-scenes role of Halle, who urged President Kennedy to bestow honorary U.S. citizenship upon Winston Churchill at special 1963 Rose Garden ceremony. But more importantly, the Halle correspondence provides further insight into the first lady's relationship with JFK during their White House years and the painful aftermath of her husband's November 1963 killing."

"To be sure, a generation of Americans admired Jacqueline Kennedy's extraordinary grace and courage during her husband's funeral and were naturally protective of her privacy when she was alive. But a wealth of letters and other documents -- including an extensive oral history by Mrs. Kennedy kept under wraps at the JFK Library until 2011 -- remained out of sight, well past her death in 1994, leaving the historical record incomplete."

"Documents like these are essential tools to gaining a clear and complete understanding our past. Surely, both JFK and Jackie Kennedy, with their keen sense of history, would have understood."

"Beautiful, intelligent, elegant and immaculately coutured, Jackie was an integral part of the “Camelot” of John F Kennedy’s presidency."

"Although she would survive her husband by 30 years, she would be haunted and perhaps defined for the rest of her life by those catastrophic few seconds in Dallas when her husband was assassinated beside her."

""Jackie Onassis will save us," the famed modern architect Philip Johnson commented when she took the lead in the fight to stop a proposed 59-story office tower from being erected over Grand Central Station. Johnson’s praise, made in 1975, captures how dramatically Mrs. Kennedy altered the public’s view of her and how easy it is to forget, living as we do in the age of Hillary Clinton and Michelle Obama, that, prior to the ’60s, presidential wives were seen but rarely heard, especially after their husbands left office."

"In deciding what to do after she moved away from Washington, Mrs. Kennedy had before her only the modern example of Eleanor Roosevelt, who, following her husband’s death, took an active role in the United Nations and continued writing her newspaper column. But Mrs. Roosevelt was in her sixties when her husband died after 12 years in office. In 1964 Jackie Kennedy was just 35, the widow of a first-term president, when she began setting historical precedents of her own."

"She looked so much better than the others, and you know why? If you look closely, you can see she had changed the buttons, the shoulders, even move the neckline."

"If the fashion gods were to curate an exhibition on the world’s most iconic women and their wardrobes, Jackie Kennedy Onassis would undoubtedly feature in the fold. Jackie O - as she affectionately became known in modish circles and beyond - had the ultimate high octane and dramatic life, so her style followed suit."

"Now Mrs Onassis, Jackie found freedom with threads: naughty thigh-high splits and European style twists blended well with her Mediterranean lifestyle. The perfectly tailored skirt suits and white gloves that epitomised her buttoned-up wardrobe era, were long gone and stayed in the museum of her stylish youth."

"Never one to leave style behind, Jackie mastered the art of looking stunning without raising too many eyebrows."

"Until Obama, the iconography of the first lady revolved around Jackie Kennedy. There had been glamorous president’s wives since – Nancy Reagan with her Dynasty gowns, say – but the notion of first lady chic remained almost synonymous with that sunny yet streamlined early-1960s style that is for ever Camelot. Half a century later, wives of heads of state all over the world are still measured against Kennedy, but the comparison is sharpest in the White House. Where her predecessors had tiptoed around the edges of Kennedy style, as if anxious to avoid the comparison, Obama has embraced many elements of the look and made them her own. The sleeveless shift dresses she favours are a direct link, as are the outsize strings of pearls, often framed by wide-set necklines. Even elements of the two women’s hair and makeup are similar, despite their physical difference: note the full, stiffly curled hair and the penchant for false eyelashes."

"Jackie, as Kenny was about to find out, was an entirely different creature. Like Kenny, she did not give a damn what other people thought of her or her actions. She did what she wanted, a trait that both Jack and Kenny would alternately admire and, especially during the White House years, find maddening."

"It was clear to the Irish Brotherhood that Jackie was a political asset. Kenny took note of it for the future, though this was not something he needed to write down on an envelope."

"We had a day trip scheduled, and particularly during a trip like this, you never know what you are going to run into. So I was very concerned about how to handle Jackie. I wanted her to be happy and content. I wanted it to be a good day. My main concern was I did not want her to fall apart, start crying, and cause any trouble for the candidate. I would not have known what to do with a sobbing, hysterical woman."

"I was astonished when I met her. Larry and I were prepared for a very high-strung, fragile, demanding china doll who couldn’t cope with anything. This is what the buildup had been. We did not know what the hell to expect. Well, I recall the day vividly because she was the most pleasant, sweet, beautiful, elegant child, and very funny. I found her to be that way from that point forward. She was and is simply a delight as a person. She never raised her voice. She never once complained. She was not enthusiastic, but she never complained. In truth, most politicians’ wives are not excited about this aspect of their lives, either, but most are phony and put on a big show. She never did that. She did exactly what you asked of her, but she was never a faker about it. She was not terribly interested in meeting the local politicians, whose big excitement was describing their local shoe factory. It wasn’t that unusual to not want to listen to some of those fellows. Half the time, I didn’t want to listen to them, either. I admired the fact that she wasn’t a phony. I noticed that the locals also seemed to admire the fact that she was not a faker. She was beautiful. Beautiful in a sense that these fellows were not accustomed to seeing. Jackie was very elegant and classy. Unusual, not your regular politician’s wife, but then Jack Kennedy was no average politician. She would travel with Jack, and he would introduce her. She would say a few words and knock everyone dead. All she had to do was say hello, and these average fellows were captivated. It really was a foreshadowing of the future. This was before she had become completely transformed, but you could see that it was coming."

"She had not yet made the full transformation into this enormously popular national figure, but you could see the potential was there. For the first time, I also saw just how important she was to the senator. Her good humor and wonderful perspective kept him level-headed, and in politics that is critical for a candidate."

"From the moment Jackie became First Lady, the public was transfixed by her unfussy approach to fashion and beauty. She guided women out of the prim dresses, stiff petticoat skirts and overly styled hairdos of the 1950s and into sleeker, more contemporary designs, such as the simple strapless gown by Christian Dior, worn at the White House in 1962."

"Jackie guarded her privacy furiously, donning dark glasses – the ultimate celebrity armour – to shield herself from the paparazzi’s unblinking gaze. It’s a marker of her fashion muscle that from the moment she started wearing super-size shades, they instantly became a must-have."

"Even off duty, Jackie’s dressed-down wardrobe was as masterclass in absolute glamour. Snapped on holiday in the 1970s with the designer Valentino, her carefree barefoot look boasts all the markers of classic Jackie O style: simple, unfussy separates, a monochrome palette, super-sized shades and, of course, her Gucci “Jackie” bag."

"As a style icon, she will never fade. From the opulent gowns and formal designs for the First Lady during Kennedy’s “Camelot” reign through the post-White House years, when she embraced more informal styles and inspired new trends (white jeans and black turtleneck, the famous bug-eyed shades, the colourful headscarves of the 1970s and 1980s), Jackie’s look was admired and copied worldwide, decade after decade, and remains an iconic example of 20th-century couture."

"The film depicts one of the darkest periods in American history and during that time she put the grief of the entire country on her shoulders and she helped carry us through it. It was nothing short of heroic the way she conducted herself that week."

"We went into a room, just she and I, and she broke down."

"She always trusted me. We were always together."

"He and Jacqueline were always very good to me, and my children and whole family."

"Jacleen, as she liked to be called, had seemed inseparable from our personal histories: the American princess in the pillbox hat; the cosmopolitan First Lady flirting in fluent French with Charles de Gaulle; the stoic widow showing the country how to grieve with dignity; the celebrity mother insistent upon giving her children a sane upbringing; the surprisingly willing trophy wife of Greek shipping tycoon Aristotle Onassis; the dedicated book editor; the still-glamorous grandmother."

"Imagine living a life that full—and dying young. Yet how strange to think that the mysterious mistress of Camelot left us only last week. To those who had never heard the tiny voice that belied her larger-than-life stature, who never saw the nails bitten ragged beneath the ladylike gloves, it was easy to believe that the woman—like the legend—would never die. Perhaps that is why the public greeted the first news of her illness almost with alarm."

"John faced the press with the same calm that his 34-year-old mother had displayed three decades earlier, when she had stood on Air Force One in her blood-spattered pink Chanel suit as Lyndon B. Johnson was sworn in as President. She had seemed so young then but, as it turned out, her life was already more than half over."

"Mrs. Kennedy very likely read The Once and Future King and perhaps saw or showed to her children the cartoon version of The Sword and the Stone (the first chapter of the four part novel) that Walt Disney produced in 1963. There were biting ironies in her attraction to a legendary kingship that unravels due to the consequences of betrayal and infidelity and to her association of the central myth of English nationality with the United States’ first Irish president. Nevertheless, she looked past these contradictions to focus on the central message of White’s novel that portrayed war as pointless and absurd. President Kennedy, as his widow wanted him to be remembered, was like King Arthur—a peacemaker who died in a campaign to pacify the warring factions of mankind."

"One must admire Mrs. Kennedy for the skill with which she deployed these images in the difficult aftermath of her husband’s death. Our retrospective view of President Kennedy is now filtered through the legends and symbols she put forward at that time. The hardheaded politician devoted to step-by- step progress was transformed in death into the consummate liberal idealist."

"Difficult as it may be to accept, the posthumous image of JFK reflected more the idealistic beliefs of Mrs. Kennedy than the practical political liberalism of the man himself."

"By turning President Kennedy into a liberal idealist (which he was not) and a near legendary figure, Mrs. Kennedy inadvertently contributed to the unwinding of the tradition of American liberalism that her husband represented in life. The images she advanced had a double effect: first, to establish Kennedy as a transcendent political figure far superior to any contemporary rival; and, second, to highlight what the nation had lost when he was killed. The two elements were mirror images of one another."

"Mrs. Kennedy’s image fostered nostalgia for the past in the belief that the Kennedy administration represented a peak of achievement that could not be duplicated. The legend of the Kennedy years as unique or magical was, in addition, divorced from real accomplishments as measured by important programs passed or difficult problems solved. The magical aspect of the New Frontier was located, by contrast, in its style and sophisticated attitude rather than in its concrete achievements. Mrs. Kennedy, without intending to do so and without understanding the consequences of her image making, put forward an interpretation of John F. Kennedy’s life and death that magnified the consequences of the assassination while leaving his successors with little upon which to build."

"The moment when she crawled out onto the back of the open limousine in which her husband had been murdered was the first and last time the American people would see Jacqueline Bouvier Kennedy Onassis crawl... She was the last great private public figure in this country. In a time of gilt and glitz and perpetual revelation, she was perpetually associated with that thing so difficult to describe yet so simple to recognize, the apotheosis of dignity."

"I wanna be Jackie Onassis. I wanna wear a pair of dark sunglasses. I wanna be Jackie. Oooh, please don't die!"

"The day John F. Kennedy was shot, Jacqueline Kennedy became the nation's mother, guiding Americans through their shock."

"Nobody knows what kind of First Lady Melania will be. There's no precedent for his presidency, so no precedent for her First Lady-ship. For now, we can only use past First Ladies as a benchmark, and Jackie might be the only comparison that sticks. Both Jackie and Melania married powerful men with name-brand families; both accustomed themselves to luxury; both chose to be fierce mothers, not fierce professionals."

"Jackie chose to preserve tradition, making the White House more regal with art and historical knickknacks."

"Before she was Jackie Kennedy, the most iconic first lady in American history, Jacqueline Bouvier was simply a young girl who loved horses."

"Looking at the photos, it is easy to see why Mr. Morgan was so taken with Jackie. From a young age, she did not appear to be burdened with the traces of self-doubt, insecurity or immaturity that most children possess, to some degree, during their formative years. Rather, what she exudes in the photos, by turns, is poise and playfulness, an air of dignified yet unflappable confidence, and at times hints of a mischievousness and strong-willed personality."

"Throughout the documentation as she grows from a small child to a young adult, a constant theme remains—her natural beauty, grace and magnetism."

"Even during the tragedies Jackie experienced, she was still strong."

"Looking back at her life, it is no wonder that she continues to inspire so many women today. She was a style icon, famous for her pillbox hats and A-line suits, but also a strong women who dealt with endless personal crises (she later also lost her second husband and her brother-in-law) in the public eye. Many of her words went on to inspire new generations, and her determination to keep on going is something all women can learn from today."

"I didn't meet her until I came to New York, and I think that so much of who she was is present on these tapes -- funny, irreverent, incredibly intuitive and wildly intelligent. She read everything, and she had been a real student of history."

"Let the skeptics snort about Camelot, but there was something during the Kennedy years that was magic. Jackie was more of that than anyone admitted for a long while. She smoothed the rough Kennedy edges. As much as anyone in those heady days, she grasped the epic dimensions of the adventure. No small portion of the glamour of the Kennedy stewardship that lives on today came from her standards of public propriety and majesty."

"It was a softly tailored suit of armor; the most feminine exemplar of power dressing, which Jackie Kennedy invented."

"If she is the style gold standard any First Lady must live in the shadow of, if not actively aspire to emulate, Mrs. Trump, who herself has spoken admiringly of Mrs. Kennedy, completed the look with retro, luxe-looking gloves."

"She had the kind of poise, tact, grace, and natural confidence that should put you at ease, but do not, because of a tension that ruled out flaws. Now and then her voice would shift from its breathy whisper to a momentary, guttural rasp—an indication, perhaps, of earthy easements that the public never suspected."

"Today, she’s remembered as a wife, mother and graceful figure who championed the arts and literature. But Jackie is also a bonafide fashion icon who inspired millions with her chic wardrobe and effortless style."

"Jackie's signature shades were both stylish and functional."

"Though her hairstyle evolved over the years, Jackie's voluminous coif was an integral part of her signature look."

"As far as Jackie was concerned, the only thing better than a rich man was an obscenely rich man."

"The coming of television, and the jet age which allowed an unprecedented range of presidential travels, made hers one of the most famous faces of the century. And her husband's assassination in Dallas made her the very symbol of grief and loss."

"Until the assassination of her husband, she performed in public precisely as he and American public opinion would have wished in a pre-feminist era. She appeared content to be the ultimate presidential accessory, providing glamour and children and that stylish patina of old money which approximates aristocracy in America."

"Having married the first president young and dashing enough to be a Prince Charming, rather than symbolic father of the nation, she put up with her own role as consort-accessory."

"She brought to the task a flair and a style which made it acceptable to be a cosmopolitan in America, to drink wine and enjoy art, and to impose her Francophile tastes on that ultimate American symbol, the White House."

"All she was fundamentally interested in was money. That was really the guiding motive of her life."

"She’s remembered for her trademark fashion sense and breathy voice, but few people know how large a role Jackie Kennedy played in her husband’s life and establishing his legacy. She was a woman who wasn’t afraid to take control of history — and even 50 years later, we still remember her husband the way she wanted us to. Modern women can learn from her graceful style and the composed front she presented to the world, but we can learn even more from what went on behind the scenes."

"As JFK campaigned, America began to take note of Jackie’s excellent sense of fashion and graceful way of speaking — transforming her from a poised housewife to a celebrity in a matter of months."

"She didn’t live to please the public, but instead centered her goals on being a good wife to Jack and mother to their two children, Caroline and John Jr. What made her so glamorous was that she wasn’t trying to be — and there’s something to be said for a woman who shied away from attention in a world that is increasingly attention-obsessed."

"Her devotion never faltered, even with the knowledge of JFK’s numerous affairs. And though it was the early 60s and the gender roles of the 1950s were still firmly in place, their relationship was called “Victorian” by some."

"So for 50 years, JFK’s brief term in the White House has been known as Camelot. He continually ranks highly on the list of America’s favorite presidents and is remembered for being a young, fresh face in American politics rather than for his criticisms. While we can attribute much of his popularity to his charm, it’s also important to realize how much Jackie affected how people would see her husband for years to come. She is the woman behind the legacy."

"Jackie Kennedy has had such a strong impact on the world that countless books and articles have been and continue to be written about her. At one time, she was even the most sought-after photograph subject in the world! If you know anything about Jackie, you won't find that hard to believe. From her dashing sense of style to her personable attitude and demeanor, she was a favorite of the people during John Kennedy's presidency and continued to fascinate the public even after his death in 1963."

"Ever since she came into the limelight as the first lady, she's been a style icon who women have strived to imitate over the years. With a style heavily influenced by European fashion, Jackie looked fabulous and put-together wherever she went. Full of poise, grace and beauty, she revolutionized women's wear in the 1950s and 60s."

"Jackie had an extremely simple style and didn't wear much jewelry. However, when she did wear accessories, they were always a reflection of her personality and never too glitzy or gaudy. Along with her large-framed sunglasses, Jackie made the three-strand pearl necklace a signature trend that women still follow today."

"There's one thing that every ensemble Jackie Kennedy ever wore had in common: She always kept it simple. This was a woman who understood that less is more. Her look was never cluttered or busy, and with every outfit she chose, she portrayed the message that you don't have to wear fancy clothes to be elegant."

"No one wakes up looking the way she did, especially not when they are on vacation. There had to have been a method to her exquisite madness—if by madness we mean locating, and then donning, the perfect big—but not too big!—sunglasses, the loveliest wind-defying silk head scarf, the just-jaunty-enough basket bag, and always, always the flawless string of pearls."

"I'm like every other woman: a closet full of clothes, but nothing to wear: So I wear jeans."

"I sincerely apologize to anyone I may have inadvertently offended...The bag was a purchase I made as a tourist in China."

"Fame does not define me. If you are looking for fame to define you, then you will never be happy and you’ll always be searching for happiness, and you will never find it in fame. Fulfillment comes from within you, by being authentic to yourself — not chasing fame."

"I didn't say that my son died for Israel. I've never said that. I saw somebody wrote that and it wasn't my words. Those aren't even words that I would say."

"I'm finished crying for Casey. I'm crying for all the other mothers."

"George, it has been seven months today since your reckless and wanton foreign policies killed my son, my big boy, my hero, my best-friend: Casey."

"We are waging a nuclear war in Iraq right now. That country is contaminated. It will be contaminated for practically eternity now."

"Iraq was not involved in 9-11, Iraq was not a terrorist state. But now that we have decimated the country, the borders are open, freedom fighters from other countries are going in, and they [the U.S. government] have created more terrorism by going to an Islamic country..."

"This is George Bush’s accountability moment."

"How many more of our loved ones need to die in this senseless war?"

"1) We want our loved ones' sacrifices to be honored by bringing our nation's sons and daughters home from the travesty that is Iraq IMMEDIATELY, since this war is based on horrendous lies and deceptions. Just because our children are dead, why would we want any more families to suffer the same pain and devastation that we are."

"2) We would like for him to explain this "noble cause" to us and ask him why Jenna and Barbara are not in harm's way, if the cause is so noble."

"3) If George is not ready to send the twins, then he should bring our troops home immediately. We will demand a speedy withdrawal."

"They can't ignore us, and they can't put us down. Thank God for the Internet, or we wouldn't know anything, and we would already be a fascist state."

"The people who are slamming me have no idea about what it feels like to unjustly have a child killed in an insane war."

"First of all, I was having fun. I was with a group of good-humored, cheerful, happy people. We were singing old protest songs and old Sunday school songs and clapping. I felt I had to be cheerful to set the tone. We didn't want any trouble or to do anything non-peaceful. Secondly, when I got arrested and the officers lifted me out I was afraid that America would see my underwear and that tickled me."

"Anyone who knows me, knows that I am not afraid of anything."

"I am tired of the warmakers making war with our children. I am tired of our tired troops being sent over to do the dirty work for mob bosses who are going to squeeze the life out of Iraq and not leave until every asset and every natural resource has been raped from the country. I am tired of seeing Iraqis burying their loved ones and hearing the reverberating screams of mothers all over our country who are being destroyed for the benefit of a very few."

"I don't speak for anyone but Cindy."

"Presidents are humans, too… it is really awkward to be with parents who have buried a child. There isn’t really anything anyone can say that isn’t somewhat hurtful. However, since I publicly opposed the wars and U.S. empire, I have heard, “He knew what he was signing up for,” many times. It’s simply not true, like I said before."

"As far as I know from personal experience and talking to other vets, particularly since 9/11, recruiters promise all kinds of benefits and promise young people that they won’t have to go to war at all. That’s what Casey’s recruiter told him in 2000. “Tell your mom, even if there is a war, you won’t see combat, because you are such a high-value recruit.” Casey was killed in combat a few days after arriving in Iraq."

"Many U.S. troops occupy countries that are no threat to the U.S. and many innocent civilians have been killed. I don’t find that heroic at all. But most “grunts” are from poor, working-class.... So they believe the recruiters and join the military. I see most of the U.S. military as victims, not heroes. Of course, no one statement covers everything adequately."

"War is barbaric. Trump has proven himself to be a loose cannon who doesn’t seem to have very many social graces. But Bush was no better. I wish the conversation was about the barbarism of war... Where is the movement to oppose U.S. wars, instead of liberal handwringing over botched messages of condolence?"

"What can a president say, “Sorry your loved one was killed so the U.S. could make sure that we had complete control over all of (fill in the blank name of country)’s natural resources and so that Boeing, Halliburton, and Raytheon could have massive profits?” Better that the barbarism of wars for profit ends."

"I still get my fair share of hate messages. But the messages from people who outright apologize to me for “hating” me and who tell me they have since changed their minds outnumber those."

"As a child of the Cold War, my experience with Cuba and its lovely people, has done more than almost anything, except Casey’s murder, to highlight the treachery and viciousness of the U.S. Empire that killed Casey and has oppressed, or killed millions more over the years."

"As well as being a vulgar producer of her own spectacle, and an embarrassment to her family, Cindy Sheehan is at best a shifty fantasist."

"I think Mrs. Sheehan bears some responsibility for this and also for the responsibility of other American families who have lost sons and daughters in Iraq, who feel that this kind of behavior borders on treasonous."

"Cindy Sheehan has become the Rosa Parks of the anti-war movement. She's tired, fed up and she's not going to take it anymore, and so now we stand with her."

"While the man is born to do whatever he can, for the woman and the negro there is no such privilege."

"The history of mankind is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations on the part of man toward woman, having in direct object the establishment of an absolute tyranny over her... He has never permitted her to exercise her inalienable right to the elective to the franchise. He has compelled her to submit to laws, in the formation of which she has no voice... Having deprived her of this first right of a citizen, the elective franchise , thereby leaving her without representation in the halls of legislation, her has oppressed her on all sides. He has made her, if married, in the eye of the law, civilly dead."

"In entering upon the great work before us, we anticipate no small amount of misconception, misrepresentation, and ridicule; but we shall use every instrumentality within our power to effect our object."

"Resolved, That is the duty of the women of this country to secure to themselves their sacred right to the elective franchise."

"The prejudice against color, of which we hear so much, is no stronger than that against sex. It is produced by the same cause, and manifested very much in the same way. The negro's skin and the woman's sex are both prima facie evidence that they were intended to be in subjection to the white Saxon man."

"Women's degradation is in man's idea of his sexual rights. Our religion, laws, customs, are all founded on the belief that woman was made for man. Come what will, my whole soul rejoices in the truth that I have uttered."

"Our "pathway" is straight to the ballot box, with no variableness nor shadow of turning...We demand in the Reconstruction suffrage for all the citizens of the Republic. I would not talk of Negroes or women, but of citizens."

"Women have crucified the Mary Wollstonecrafts, the Fanny Wrights, and the George Sands of all ages. Men mock us with the fact and say we are ever cruel to each other... If this present woman must be crucified, let men drive the spikes."

"We are, as a sex, infinitely superior to men, and if we were free and developed, healthy in body and mind, as we should be under natural conditions, our motherhood would be our glory. That function gives women such wisdom and power as no male can possess."

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men and women are created equal."

"I have endeavored to dissipate these religious superstitions from the minds of women, and base their faith on science and reason, where I found for myself at last that peace and comfort I could never find in the Bible and the church."

"For fifty years the women of this nation have tried to dam up this deadly stream that poisons all their lives, but thus far they have lacked the insight or courage to follow it back to its source and there strike the blow at the fountain of all tyranny, religious superstition, priestly power and the canon law."

"In defense of the right to...marry whom we please -- we might quote some of the basic principles of our government [and] suggest that in some things individual rights to tastes should control....If a good man from Maryland sees fit to marry a disenfranchised woman from New York, there should be no legal impediments to the union."

"To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt."

"All honor to the noble women that have devoted earnest lives to the intellectual needs of mankind!"

"Susan had an earnest soul, a conscience tending to morbidity."

"In ancient Greece she would have been a Stoic; in the era of the Reformation, a Calvinist; in King Charles's time, a Puritan; but in this nineteenth century, by the very laws of her being, she is a Reformer."

"The isolation of every human soul and the necessity of self-dependence must give each individual the right, to choose his own surroundings."

"No matter how much women prefer to lean, to be protected and supported, nor how much men desire to have them do so, they must make the voyage of life alone, and for safety in an emergency they must know something of the laws of navigation."

"No mortal ever has been, no mortal ever will be like the soul just launched on the sea of life."

"To deny political equality is to rob the ostracised of all self-respect; of credit in the market place; of recompense in the world of work; of a voice among those who make and administer the law; a choice in the jury before whom they are tried, and in the judge who decides their punishment."

"Come, come, my conservative friend, wipe the dew off your spectacles, and see that the world is moving."

"The darkest page in history is the persecutions of woman."

"Men think that self-sacrifice is the most charming of all the cardinal virtues for women, and in order to keep it in healthy working order, they make opportunities for its illustration as often as possible. I would fain teach women that self-development is a higher duty than self-sacrifice."

"The only points in which I differ from all ecclesiastical teaching is that I do not believe that any man ever saw or talked with God, I do not believe that God inspired the Mosaic code, or told the historians what they say he did about woman, for all the religions on the face of the earth degrade her, and so long as woman accepts the position that they assign her, her emancipation is impossible."

"Accepting the view that man was prior in the creation, some Scriptural writers say that as the woman was of the man, therefore, her position should be one of subjection. Grant it, then as the historical fact is reversed in our day, and the man is now of the woman, shall his place be one of subjection?"

"In fact the wives of the patriarchs, all untruthful, and one a kleptomaniac, but illustrate the law, that the cardinal virtues are seldom found in oppressed classes."

"In the criminal code we find no feminine pronouns, as "He," "His," "Him," we are arrested, tried and hung, but singularly enough, we are denied the highest privileges of citizens, because the pronouns "She," "Hers" and "Her," are not found in the constitutions. It is a pertinent question, if women can pay the penalties of their crimes as "He," why may they not enjoy the privileges of citizens as "He"?"

"The vision that impels feminists to action was the vision of the Grandmothers' society, the society that was captured in the words of the sixteenth-century explorer Peter Martyr nearly five hundred years ago. It is the same vision repeated over and over by radical thinkers of Europe and America, from François Villon to John Locke, from William Shakespeare to Thomas Jefferson, from Karl Marx to Friedrich Engels, from Benito Juarez to Martin Luther King, from Elizabeth Cady Stanton to Judy Grahn, from Harriet Tubman to Audre Lorde, from Emma Goldman to Bella Abzug, from Malinalli to Cherrie Moraga, and from Iyatiku to me. That vision as Martyr told it is of a country where there are "no soldiers, no gendarmes or police, no nobles, kings, regents, prefects, or judges, no prisons, no lawsuits... All are equal and free.""

"I want you to understand that I never could have done the work I have if I had not had this woman at my right hand."

"I never saw that great woman, Mary Wollstonecraft, but I l have read her eloquent and unanswerable arguments in behalf of the liberty of womankind. I have met and known most of the progressive women who came after her — Lucretia Mott, the Grimké sisters, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucy Stone — a long galaxy of great women. I have heard them speak, saying in only slightly different phrases exactly what I heard these newer advocates of the cause say at these meetings. Those older women have gone on and most of those who work with me in the early years have gone. I am here for a little time only and then my place will be filled as theirs was filled. The fight must not cease; you must see that it does not stop. There have been others also just as true and devoted to the cause — I wish I could name every one — but with such women consecrating their lives, failure is impossible!"

"there was considerable anti-Semitic sentiment among Protestant suffrage leaders. Stanton focused on the Jewish (“Old”) Testament attitude to women..."

"It is no wonder that the eager, highly intelligent, already rebellious, young bride Elizabeth Cady Stanton found Lucretia Mott a "revelation," and they "walked home arm in arm" from the convention hall to their lodgings in Queen Street declaring "it was high time some demand was made for the liberties of women," and "discussing the propriety of calling a woman's rights convention.""

"The struggle for the right of women to vote was nationwide and growing. It had started with the first Equal Rights Convention, at Seneca Falls, New York, in 1848, led by Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, which was addressed by Frederick Douglass, the great Negro leader. The suffragists had been ridiculed, assaulted by mobs, refused halls, arrested for attempting to vote, disowned by their families. By 1904, groups of working women, especially Socialist women, were banding together to join in the demand for the vote. Two years later, International Women's Day was born on the East Side of New York, at the initiative of these women demonstrating for suffrage. It spread around the world and is universally celebrated today, while here it is deprecated as "a foreign holiday.""

"Brave women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony had been the early pioneers, facing abuse and ridicule, violence and even arrests for attempting to vote. Later, women like Dr. Anna Howard Shaw and Carrie Chapman Catt headed the National American Women's Suffrage Association, which struggled against "the lethargy of women and the opposition of men." But by 1916 a younger, bolder and more militant group emerged, which was dissatisfied with the slower process of winning suffrage, state by state, and fought for a constitutional amendment. They organized the Women's Party in 1916, which planned to mobilize the women's vote in all suffrage states only for parties and candidates who would support national suffrage. That year a group of wealthy suffragists financed and toured in a Suffrage Special. They did not campaign directly for the Republican candidate, Charles Evans Hughes, but their slogan was anti-Wilson: "Vote against Wilson! He Kept Us Out of Suffrage!" Many voted for Eugene V. Debs, then in prison."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Amelia Bloomer, Carrie Nation, Frances Willard, Lucy Stone, Lucretia Mott, and the later suffragists of whom she [her mother] was one. These courageous women set a pattern not understood yet, standing in their prim strength, in their sweetness and sobriety against cruel ridicule, moral censure, charges of insanity; for there is no cruelty like that of the oppressor who feels his loss of the bit on those it has been his gain to oppress. "Pine knots as we are," Susan Anthony said. They used the only means open to them - they became orators when it was considered immoral for a woman to speak in public; if she went to meetings she was only to listen and learn. But they could use their constitutional right of petition, and they could tramp up and down, getting signatures for the right to work, to get a divorce, to speak in public, to vote."

"The History of Woman Suffrage is an incomplete, flawed and heavily biased assemblage of sources. It distorts the origins of the movement by ignoring or downplaying the role of many activists and antecedent activists in favor of stressing the leadership of a few women. The strongly secular bias of its editors and their disenchantment with the organized churches in regard to the struggle of women for their emancipation are reflected in the way they defined the movement as mostly political and constitutional, disregarding the important feminist struggles in the various churches during the century.It is also factionally biased in its downplaying of the role of the women who in 1869 split with Stanton and Anthony, a distortion which is particularly striking in regard to the role of Lucy Stone. Yet these volumes have provided the basis for over a hundred years of historiography on the subject and, in what Mary Ritter Beard called "the long history of women," represent a milestone."

"I have documented 700 years of feminist bible criticism prior to 1870, and every woman who engaged in that feminist bible criticism thought she was the first woman ever to do this. And when Elizabeth Cady Stanton in 1893, published the Woman’s Bible, she put in the forward, “No woman before me has ever done this.” This is tragic, because it symbolizes the true position that women held in the world, which was to think, each woman thought, and each man taught each woman to think, and each mother taught their sons and daughters to think, that women have not contributed significantly to the creation of thought, to the creation of culture, and to the creation of civilization. This is a lie, all right?"

"Mainstream feminist leaders (with the exception of the aging Elizabeth Cady Stanton and the younger Charlotte Perkins Gilman) muted the earlier criticism of sexual and familial relationships in favor of concentration on legal and political issues. Whether they shifted their emphasis because of ideological considerations or as a tactical move was in one sense irrelevant; in the eyes of both its own rank-and-file and the larger society the movement as a whole became less radical, less threatening, and hence less likely to effect fundamental changes. The anarchist-feminists refused to accept this solution to the dilemma."

"From the mid-seventies onward, organized feminism had become increasingly decorous. Matilda Joslyn Gage, after all, was forced to go outside the organized movement to find a platform for her anticlerical views, and the venerable but always irreverent Elizabeth Cady Stanton found herself out-flanked and outvoted by her more conventional sisters. While feminism moved toward respectability, anarchism, at least in the public view, became increasingly radical. Partly because of the fiery rhetoric of Johann Most and his admirers, and partly because of antiforeign sentiment, the anarchist came to be viewed as a symbol of irrational violence. The public image of the anarchist was that of a deranged terrorist."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton who, amid no little derision from American lawyers, had battled valiently against William Blackstone's dictum that woman was a favorite in English law and had lived to see many triumphs over common-law doctrines in the enactment of married women's property acts in state after state."

"With constant reiteration, the acclaimed legalist of the woman movement in the nineteenth century, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, an outstanding pleader for women's rights before law-making bodies, spoke and wrote as if William Blackstone's account of English law was in fact the law of the land-supreme law-in nearly all vital man-woman relations. It is true that Mrs. Stanton mentioned from time to time the gains which women had been making and were making in their struggle against formulas of the common law; but she repeatedly resorted to wholesale generalizations which treated Blackstone's sweeping generalizations as still binding in law, even to her day in the United States."

"Struggle brought about the 19th Amendment to the Constitution, which prohibited the government from denying women the right to vote. The amendment did not just appear: It was the fruit of the struggle of the suffragettes, led by such figures as Lucretia Mott, Susan B. Anthony, and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the mid-nineteenth century."

"Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony, the greatest of the early leaders"

"I had always resented the pains that militant suffragists took to belittle the work that woman had done in the past in the world, picturing her as a meek and prostrate "doormat." They refused, I felt, to pay proper credit to the fine social and economic work that women had done in the building of America. And in 1909, after we took over the American Magazine, I burst out with a series of studies of leading American women from the Revolution to the Civil War, including such stalwarts as Mercy Warren, Abigail Adams, Esther Reed, Mary Lyon, Catharine Beecher, the fighting antislavery leaders-not omitting two for whom I had warm admiration, if I was not in entire agreement with them, Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony."

"I can’t say it, but it rhymes with rich."

"The personal things should be left out of platforms at conventions.... You can argue yourself blue in the face, and you’re not going to change each other’s minds. It’s a waste of your time and my time."

"Avoid this crowd like the plague. And if they quote you, make damn sure they heard you."

"But why should we hear about body bags and deaths, and how many, what day it's gonna happen, and how many this or that or what do you suppose? Or, I mean, it's not relevant. So, why should I waste my beautiful mind on something like that, and watch him (her husband, former president George H. W. Bush) suffer?"

"What I'm hearing, which is sort of scary, is they [the Hurricane Katrina refugees in the Houston Astrodome] all want to stay in Texas. Everyone is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway, so this is working very well for them."

"For heaven's sake enjoy life. Don't cry over things that were or things that aren't. Enjoy what you have now to the fullest. In all honesty you really only have two choices; you can like what you do OR you can dislike it. I choose to like it and what fun I have had. The other choice is no fun and people do not want to be around a whiner. We can always find people who are worse off and we don't have to look far! Help them and forget self! I would certainly say, above all, seek God. He will come to you if you look. There is absolutely NO down side."

"Dear First Lady: I recently read your criticism of my family. I was deeply hurt. Heaven knows we're far from perfect and, if truth be known, maybe just a wee bit short of normal; but as Dr. Seuss says, "a person is a person". I try to teach my children Bart, Lisa, and even little Maggie, always to give somebody the benefit of the doubt and not talk badly about them, even if they're rich. It's hard to get them to understand this advice when the very First Lady in the country calls us not only dumb, but "the dumbest thing" she ever saw. Ma'am, if we're the dumbest thing you ever saw, Washington must be a good deal different than what they teach me at the current events group at the church. I always believed in my heart that we had a great deal in common. Each of us living our lives to serve an exceptional man. I hope there is some way out of this controversy. I thought, perhaps, it would be a good start to just speak my mind."

"How many women do we know who were continually kissed by Clark Gable, William Powell, Cary Grant, Spencer Tracy and Fredric March? Only one: Myrna Loy... And to meet whom did Franklin D. Roosevelt find himself tempted to call off the Yalta Conference? Myrna Loy. And to see what lady in what picture did John Dillinger risk coming out of hiding to meet his bullet-ridden death in an alley in Chicago? Myrna Loy, in Manhattan Melodrama."

"I think your whole life shows in your face and you should be proud of that."

"Looking at yourself in a mirror isn't exactly a study of life."

"You just learn to cope with whatever you have to cope with. I spent my childhood in New York, riding on subways and buses. And you know what you learn if you’re a New Yorker? The world doesn’t owe you a damn thing."

"She's not a legend. She's a beginner. What is this 'legend'? She can't be a legend at whatever age she is. She can't be a legend, you have to be older."

"Nicole and I worked together on Dogville and we were friends when we started this. That laid the groundwork for our fabulous relationship on screen and off."

"When you talk about a great actor, you're not talking about Tom Cruise. His whole behavior is so shocking. It's inappropriate and vulgar and absolutely unacceptable to use your private life to sell anything commercially, but I think it's kind of a sickness."

"Imagination is the highest kite that can fly."

"The people I've known I must say are extraordinary. When I think about some of them, I can't believe that I knew them all. And I think the reason I knew most of them at the beginning was because they were of Bogie's generation, 25 years my senior, not mine. But they were the most talented people of all."

"I was Betty Bacall always. And Lauren was Howard Hawks... he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a Svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved."

"Bacall: I'm a total Democrat. I'm anti-Republican. And it's only fair that you know it. Even though..."

"Losing Bogey was horrible, obviously. Because he was young. And because he gave me my life. I wouldn't have had a — I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't met him — I would have had a completely different kind of life. He changed me, he gave me everything. And he was an extraordinary man."

"Well, his attention span was not long, shall we say."

"I love Nicole. Nicole and I happen to be very great friends. Besides that, the press never get it straight. They do not print what you say... We were in Venice for Birth at the Venice Film Festival. And you know when you have a day when you go from one room to another with the roundtables with about five journalists sitting around at each table throwing questions at you all the time. So in one of these rooms, I'm sitting there. And one of the journalists said, you're an icon and Nicole Kidman's an icon and what do you think about that? And I said, why do you have to burden her with the category? She's a young woman. She's got her whole career ahead of her. Why does she have to be pegged as an icon or as anything? Let her enjoy her time. Don't, you know, suddenly put her in a slot. And that was all I said. The word "legend" never came up. It was "icon.""

"A planned life is a dead life."

"I went to a sneak preview... I was sort of stunned by it, because you don't realize what you've done. I never knew what was going to happen, but they knew. Warners knew, and Howard knew."

"[B]adly, playing the Missouri Waltz, or something."

"That's absolutely one of my most favorite movies, for so many reasons. I fought for that part; I wanted it badly. I took a lower salary, I did everything. Grace Kelly said, "I'll never forgive you for playing that part. It was written for me". She [Kelly] got the prince [Rainier], I got the part."

"He was... a womanizer, he wanted to be in the sack with everybody."

"It's not an old movie if you haven't seen it."

"Her life speaks for itself … She lived a wonderful life, a magical life."

"People said Bacall was 'tough.' She's a pussycat with a heart of gold."

"[I]t was her modelling career that took off before the acting one when she was introduced to the Harper's Bazaar columnist Diana Vreeland by none other than Baron Nicolas de Gunzburg — not just an editor at the magazine but also a former actor who had played the leading role in Carl Dreyer's classic Vampyr (1932)."

"It could be that today's conservative movement remains in thrall to the same narrative that has defined its attitude toward film and the arts for decades. Inspired by feelings of exclusion after Hollywood and the popular culture turned leftward in the '60s and '70s, this narrative has defined the film industry as an irredeemably liberal institution toward which conservatives can only act in opposition—never engagement. Ironically, this narrative ignores the actual history of Hollywood, in which conservatives had a strong presence from the industry's founding in the early 20th century up through the '40s, '50s and into the mid-'60s]. The conservative Hollywood community at that time included such leading directors as Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, and Cecil B. DeMille, and major stars like John Wayne, Clark Gable, and Charlton Heston. These talents often worked side by side with notable Hollywood liberals like directors Billy Wilder, William Wyler, and John Huston, and stars like Humphrey Bogart, Lauren Bacall, and Spencer Tracy. The richness of classic Hollywood cinema is widely regarded as a testament to the ability of these two communities to work together, regardless of political differences."

"Mr. Hussein's dogged insistence on pursuing his nuclear ambitions, along with what defectors described in interviews as Iraq's push to improve and expand Baghdad's chemical and biological arsenals, have brought Iraq and the United States to the brink of war."

"Good evening. This is your Captain We are about to attempt a crash landing... Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees Your Captain says: Put your head in your hands... We are going down We are all going down, together... Standby."

"Uh – this is your Captain again You know, I've got a funny feeling I've seen this all before Why? Cause, I'm a caveman Why? Cause, I've got eyes in the back of my head Why? It's the heat. Standby This is the time. And this is the record of the time"

"Golden cities. Golden towns And long cars, in long lines and great big signs And they all say: Hallelujah. Yodellayheehoo Every man for himself. Ooo coo coo Golden cities. Golden towns. Thanks for the ride Big Science. Hallelujah. Big Science. Yodellayheehoo"

"Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha... Hello? This is your mother, are you there? Are you coming home?...Hello? Is anybody home? Well, you don't know me, but I know you And I've got a message to give to you And I said: okay, who is this really? And the voice said: This is the hand, the hand that takes...Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night Shall stay these couriers from the swift completion Of their appointed rounds"

"Let X equal X You know, it could be you It's a sky-blue sky The satellites are out tonight Let X equal X...You know, I could write a book And this book would be thick enough to stun an ox 'cause I can see the future, and it's a place... Thanks for all the presents... Thanks for introducing me to the Chief"

"She said, it looks Don't you think it looks a lot like rain? He said, isn't it? Isn't it just, isn't it just like a woman? She said, it's hard It's just hard, it's just kind of hard to say"

"Paradise Is exactly like Where you are right now Only much much Better."

"And he said: Now, I'm the Soul Doctor, and you know, language is a virus from outer space, and hearing your name is better than seeing your face."

"And you know the reason I really love the stars is that we cannot hurt them. We can't burn them or melt them or make them overflow. We can't flood them or blow them up or turn them out. But we are reaching for them. We are reaching for them."

"There is one tradition in America I am proud to inherit. It is our first freedom and the truest expression of our Americanism: the ability to dissent without fear. It is our right to utter the words, "I disagree." We must feel at liberty to speak those words to our neighbors, our clergy, our educators, our news media, our lawmakers and, above all, to the one among us we elect President."

"I grew up as a TV baby, with my TV babysitter, up until I was about 10. Then my mother just ripped the thing out of the wall and put it in a closet, and we didn't watch it. I have that sort of ability to become addicted to it. And I'm just so fascinated by it once I turn it on, I'm not even that aware what's there. I'm just watching it. So I don't ever turn it on. I get my news from the newspaper. I don't want to watch the Hollywood news product on TV... There's no other piece of furniture in my home I'd stare at for three hours at a time, so I try not to do it to the TV."

"My drug period was between the age of 17 and 18. That was a time when I was experimenting with a lot of things, I was experimenting with sleep deprivation, fasting. The longest fast I ever did was 12 days. You go that long without food and you hallucinate. I would take this powder made out of guarana seed, my friend Mary would bake it up like cocoa in muffins and leave them on my doorstep. My drinking period was when I was 13, 14. Drugs fascinated me for a short period of time but not any more. A glass of wine puts me in a weird enough state."

"It’s pretty obvious to everyone that the revolution has happened. The People can now easily cut out a hoard of middlemen (record companies, radio stations, music press and retail shops). With a series of computer strokes they can find the music they want to hear, become informed about the musicians who make it, find other people who share their interest and ultimately either buy, trade or steal that coveted sound."

"After spending nearly 20 years contracted to a major label, I have mixed feelings about their demise. These companies have profited immensely from your insatiable desire for listening and helped musicians for several decades to reach you. They grew fat and excessive. They exploited and they monopolized. They edited and censured. They’ve been rapidly losing their means of production, distribution and promotion to the internet. They have been economizing by dropping artists, cutting staff and folding into one another but they can’t keep up with the pace of disintegration. You might not have ever heard my name if Elektra Records hadn’t made me one of their artists for hire. I’m both grateful and resentful and you probably are too."

"I don’t listen to anything on the radio but NPR and occasional oldies programs. I can’t comment on the content or format of most commercial radio but I have read the statistics about the step-by-step deregulation of FCC rules that has allowed monopolies like Clear Channel to buy up massive shares of the airwaves. This has damaged our business (music) and our culture (American). The internet is offering bold alternatives but a transistor radio is only $25.00 and not everyone is hooked up through a computer and high speed connection."

"I don’t want to overdo discussing my experience of motherhood, its too private and profound to parade around. I will say that carrying a child, giving birth to a child and raising that child up has made me feel more engaged and connected to others. I have a greater understanding of people (living past & present). We all begin so pure, so innocent and so hungry for physical and emotional comfort. It’s so important that every baby be generously cherished, fed and comforted. I can see now how withholding these essentials can do irreparable damage. Now (post-baby) when I encounter a sad or aggressive character, I wonder what the first three years of his or her life were like. Imaging them alone, crying in their cribs has given me much more compassion."

"For the time being I am enjoying my chance to enjoy civilian life off the road. If I combined all the months that I have lived out of a van or tour bus it would amount to twelve solid years. That would be twelve years of driving or flying an average of 100 to 400 miles per day and sleeping in a different city every night. It was a very unique lifestyle that I adapted to and even enjoyed with it’s surreal pace. It’s also a lifestyle that can take a toll on the body and relationships with the people that you are constantly leaving behind."

"I think many people have been made curious about Henry Darger because of the song on my album Motherland. Henry Darger (1892-1973) was the author and illustrator of what could possibly be the longest unfinished fictional work of all time. His towering hand-bound manuscript of 17,000 pages was found in this obscure retired hospital janitor’s apartment after his death. Henry worked in obsessed isolation for six decades on his saga entitled, The Story of the Vivian Girls, in What is Known as the Realms of the Unreal, of the Glandeco-Angelinian War Storm, Caused by the Child Slave Rebellion."

"I saw my first Henry Darger collage/paintings in the early 1980’s when the tale of Henry’s life was just emerging through rumor and scattered fragments of his book. He lived and died a recluse in Chicago where no one knew of his writings or paintings. There was a folk art gallery in New Orleans that had acquired a small pile of Realms of the Unreal illustrations. I was on tour with REM at the time, Michael Stipe and I visited the gallery where we had a first look at these images of seven little horrified girls pursued by a purple and orange winged cats or evil professors on horseback or resting peacefully under giant sunflowers. I was completely captivated and intrigued."

"If I could calm or restrain you for the sake of pity save the pistol save the cynic's tongue save the cool white stare treat me to an honest face sometime"

"I'm tired of the excuses everybody uses he's their kid I stay out of it, but who gave you the right to do this?"

"threats like, "if you don't mind I will beat on your behind" "slap you, slap you silly" made me say, "o, what's the matter here?""

"heaven, is this heaven where we are?"

"see them walking, if you dare if you call that walking stumble, stagger, fall and drag themselves along the streets of heaven"

"where is the halo that should glow 'round your face and where are the wings that should grow from your shoulder blades?"

"these sobering sights I've seen in the City of Angels have all been one rude awakening that was due to me in this city of fallen angels"

"the color of the sky as far as I can see is coal gray lift my head from the pillow and then fall again with a shiver in my bones just thinking about the weather a quiver in my lips as if I might cry"

"what a cold and rainy day where on earth is the sun hid away?"

"don't talk, I will listen don't talk, you keep your distance I'd rather hear some truth tonight than entertain your lies"

"talk, talk, talk about it you talk as if you care but when your talk is over tilt that bottle in the air tossing back more than your share"

"hey Jack Kerouac I think of your mother and the tears she cried, she cried for none other than her little boy lost in our little world that hated and that dared to drag him down her little boy courageous who chose his words from mouths of babes got lost in the wood hip flask slinging madman, steaming cafe flirts they all spoke through you"

"hey Jack now for the tricky part when you were the brightest star who were the shadows? of the San Francisco beat boys you were the favorite now they sit and rattle their bones and think of their blood stoned days"

"trouble me disturb me with all your cares and you worries trouble me on the days when you feel spent"

"speak to me don't mislead me, the calm I feel means a storm is swelling there's no telling where it starts or how it ends"

"let me have a look inside these eyes while I'm learning please don't hide them just because of tears"

"these are days you'll remember"

"you'll know it's true, that you are blessed and lucky it's true, that you are touched by something that will grow and bloom in you"

"these days you might feel a shaft of light make its way across your face and when you do you'll know how it was meant to be see the signs and know their meaning"

"If lust and hate is the candy if blood and love tastes so sweet then we give 'em what they want Hey, hey, give 'em what they want"

"So their eyes are growing hazy 'cause they want to turn it on so their minds are soft and lazy Well, hey, give 'em what they want"

"I've walked these streets in the mad house asylum they can be where a wild eyed misfit prophet on a traffic island stopped and he raved of saving me"

"have I been blind have I been lost inside myself and my own mind hypnotized mesmerized by what my eyes have seen?"

"doctors have come from distant cities just to see me stand over my bed disbelieving what they're seeing they say I must be one of the wonders of god's own creation and as far as they can see they can offer no explanation"

"newspapers ask intimate questions want confessions they reach into my head to steal the glory of my story"

"people see me I'm a challenge to your balance I'm over your heads how I confound you and astound you"

"o, I believe fate smiled and destiny laughed as she came to my cradle know this child will be able laughed as she came to my mother know this child will not suffer laughed as my body she lifted know this child will be gifted with love, with patience and with faith she'll make her way"

"Ophelia was a bride of god a novice Carmelite in sister cells the cloister bells tolled on her wedding night"

"Ophelia was a circus queen the female cannonball projected through five flaming hoops to wild and shocked applause..."

"Ophelia was a cyclone, tempest a god damned hurricane your common sense your best defense lay wasted and in vain"

"Ophelia's mind went wandering you'd wonder where she'd gone through secret doors down corridors she'd wander them alone"

"people struggle, people fight for the simple pleasures in their lives but trouble comes from everywhere it's a little more than you can bear"

"I know that it will hurt I know that it will break your heart the way things are and the way they've been and the way they've always been"

"people ruthless, people cruel see the damage that some people do full of hatred, full of pride it's enough to make you lose your mind"

"don't spread the discontent don't spread the lies don't make the same mistakes with your own life"

"take a look at my body look at my hands there's so much here that I don't understand"

"your face saving promises whispered like prayers I don't need them"

"contempt loves the silence it thrives in the dark with fine winding tendrils that strangle the heart they say that promises sweeten the blow but I don't need them no, I don't need them"

"o, I need the darkness the sweetness the sadness the weakness I need this"

"I need a lullaby a kiss goodnight angel sweet love of my life o, I need this"

"you've been so kind and generous I don't know how you keep on giving for your kindness I'm in debt to you for your selflessness, my admiration and for everything you've done you know I'm bound... I'm bound to thank you for it"

"I want to thank you for so many gifts you gave with love and tenderness I want to thank you I want to thank you for your generosity the love and the honesty that you gave me"

"they told you life is hard it's misery from the start it's dull and slow and painful I tell you life is sweet in spite of the misery there's so much more be grateful"

"who do you believe? who will you listen to who will it be? it's high time that you decide in your own mind"

"where in hell can you go far from the things that you know far from the sprawl of concrete that keeps crawling its way about 1,000 miles a day?"

"take one last look behind commit this to memory and mind don't miss this wasteland, this terrible place when you leave keep your heart off your sleeve"

"motherland cradle me close my eyes lullaby me to sleep keep me safe lie with me stay beside me don't go, don't you go"

"once I could love, I could trust, I could not doubt but that was just about the worst thing that I could do it was just about the worst thing that I could do"

"once I was open, could hope, I had no doubt but that was the worst thing that I could do"

"once I came close to that most elusive fire burning with hopeless love and desire but it was just about the worst thing that I could do it was just about the worst thing I could do"

"who'll save the poor little girl? oh, Henry... who'll tell the story of her? Henry Darger"

"who will draw the calvary in risk his very own precious skin to make our Angelinia a free and peaceful land again? Henry who'll love a poor orphan child? Henry Darger"

"The animals of the world exist for their own reasons. They were not made for humans any more than black people were made for whites or women for men."

"He has told me he likes men as well as he likes women, which seems only natural, he says, since he is the offspring of two sexes as well as two races. No one is surprised he is biracial; why should they be surprised he is bisexual? This is an explanation I have never heard and cannot entirely grasp; it seems too logical for my brain."

"I felt in Georgia and on the east coast generally very squeezed. People have so many hang-ups about how other people live their lives. People always want to keep you in a little box or they need to label you and fix you in time and location. I feel a greater fluidity here. People are much more willing to accept that nothing is permanent, everything is changeable so there is freedom and I do need to live where I can be free."

"The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don't have any."

"Activism is the rent I pay for living on the planet."

"I want a grown-up attitude to Cuba, for instance, a country and people I love. I want an end to the war immediately, and I want the soldiers to be encouraged to destroy their weapons and drive themselves out of Iraq. I want the Israeli government to be made accountable for its behaviour to the Palestinians, and I want the people of the US to cease acting as if they don't understand what is going on. But most of all I want someone with the confidence to talk to anyone, "enemy" or "friend", and this Obama has shown he can do."

"The harm that you do to others is the harm that you do to yourself and you cannot think then that you can cause wars in other parts of the world and destroy people and drone them without this having a terrible impact on your own soul and your own consciousness."

"I think unless the people are given information about what is happening to them, they will die in ignorance. And i think that's the big sin. I mean if there is such a thing as a sin, that's it, to destroy people and not have them have a clue about how this is happening."

"Us sing and dance, make faces and give flower bouquets, trying to be loved. You ever notice that trees do everything to get attention we do, except walk?"

"They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. They calls me yellow like yellow be my name. But if yellow is a name Why aint black the same. Well, if I say Hey black girl Lord, she try to ruin my game."

"I don’t know nothing, I think. And glad of it."

"The little I knew about my own self wouldn’t have filled a thimble!"

"Niggers going to Africa, he said to his wife. Now I have seen everything."

"We know a roofleaf is not Jesus Christ, but in its own humble way, is it not God?"

"The world is changing, I said. It is no longer a world just for boys and men."

"I think Africans are very much like white people back home, in that they think they are the center of the universe and that everything that is done is done for them."

"I think it pisses God off if you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don’t notice it."

"I think us here to wonder, myself. To wonder. To ast. And that in wondering bout the big things and asting bout the big things, you learn about the little ones, almost by accident. But you never know nothing more about the big things than you start out with. The more I wonder, he say, the more I love."