Memoirists From The United States

"Punishment of cadets had been artfully crafted. In the early nineteenth century, West Point officials deemed manual labor an inappropriate punishment for a cadet: It would have been an ungentlemanly task for a future officer. But they could make him do something that was tiring, embarrassing, and, most excruciating, accomplished nothing. So cadets ever since have been awarded "Area tours," each representing an hour- two hours on Friday afternoon, and then three on Saturday- walking in our dress gray uniforms with rifles across the Area. As my bemused father explained to me, the Area does not make you smarter, braver, or more expert; even trench digging would offer some tangible benefit. At the academy, where we hoarded free minutes, walking the yard meant wasted hours."

"Service in this business is tough and often dangerous. It extracts a price for participants, and that price can be high. It is tempting to protect yourself from the personal and professional cost of loss by limiting how much you commit, how much you believe and trust in people, and how deeply you care… If I had it to do over again, I’d do some things in my career differently, but not many. I believed in people and I still believe in them. I trusted and I still trust. I cared and I still care. I wouldn’t have had it any other way."

"It became clear to me and to many others that to defeat a networked enemy we had to become a network ourselves."

"I spent a career carrying typically either an M16 or an M4 Carbine. An M4 Carbine fires a .223 caliber round which is 5.56mm at about 3000 feet per second. When it hits a human body, the effects are devastating. It’s designed for that. That’s what our soldiers ought to carry. I personally don’t think there’s any need for that kind of weaponry on the streets and particularly around the schools in America."

"She made me laugh. I will miss her. Baba Wawa."

"We thought that he was going to be -- I shouldn't say this at Christmastime -- but the next messiah."

"I can have respect and admiration for famous people, but I have never had a sense of fear or awe."

"What kind of tree are you, if you think you're a tree now?"

"I find very often people like to confront rumors. It depends on how much they trust you. And you have to have a line between what is tasteful and what isn't."

"A great many people think that polysyllables are a sign of intelligence and refinement so they think they will impress others with their command of obscure words."

"The world may be full of fourth-rate writers but it's also full of fourth-rate readers."

"Deep breaths are very helpful at shallow parties."

"The sports page records people's accomplishments, the front page usually records nothing, but man's failures."

"Now here I was, half Jane Wyman, half Shirley Temple, and people began to stop me in the street and say, 'Don't worry, Barbara, it's all right, you won't lose your job.' It was really very touching."

"A man cannot be comfortable [or cannot be made comfortable] without his own approval."

"If I grew up in the simple-minded belief that women were as strong and intelligent as men, it was because I came from a society that had once believed it."

"People just showed up and were always made welcome. To stay less than an hour was an insult, and there was always a meal."

"The frontier will nevertheless survive in the attitudes a few of us inherited from it. One of those attitudes—to me a beatitude—is the conviction that the past matters, that history weighs on us and refuses to be forgotten by us, and that the worst poverty women—or men—can suffer is to be bereft of their past."

"Within our family there was no such thing as a person who did not matter. Second cousins thrice removed mattered."

"All fiction may be autobiography, but all autobiography is of course fiction."

"We all grow up with the weight of history on us. Our ancestors dwell in the attics of our brains as they do in the spiraling chains of knowledge hidden in every cell of our bodies."

"My beautiful Grandmother -- Caroline Garlinghouse -- came from Pittsburgh -- my mother's mother. I never met her but I have followed many of her ideas -- through my mother -- And it has given me a warm spot in my heart for your city...My grandmother's brother, Fred Garlinghouse, lived in Pittsburgh, was an engineer and apparently worked for Jones and Laughlin Steel Company."

"I survived those three weeks with hardly a decent meal or anyone to help. I kept a brown paper bag in the wastebasket next to my bed. I ate all my meals in my bedroom during this time, so I could pitch the inedible food into it and not be rude to the cooks. This problem, though it had overtones of comedy, was not good for my health. All my film career I had envied Katharine Hepburn's high cheekbones and narrow face. Now I had them."

"Katie Hepburn went to the meetings. She was a good friend of 's. I had a little car, a little broken down Ford Roadster with a rumble seat. I used to go around and collect people Saturday night and we'd go up to Eunice's house. She lived in a brownstone house of her parents on 65th Street. We would go up to the third floor, which was her bedroom with a lovely fire glowing, and lie on the floor and talk about the theatre. I remember one night Katie Hepburn said: ‘Well, I'm not going to join the organization. I've decided against it.' ‘Why, Katie, how can you even think that way?' She said, ‘I don't know. I just feel that I have to do it alone.' I'll never forget that night."

"I think he has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades"

"Tough-minded, realistic, and very pro-American."

"Most governments lie to each other. That’s the way business gets done."

"I looked into his eyes and I didn't see his soul, but a cold-blooded killer. Gates to George W Bush, as quoted in "On GPS: Gates on Putin, 27 February 2022" (2006)"

"It has become clear that America’s civilian institutions of diplomacy and development have been chronically undermanned and underfunded for far too long – relative to what we spend on the military, and more important, relative to the responsibilities and challenges our nation has around the world."

"As a dedicated, successful writer, Lydia Sigourney violated essential elements of the very gender roles she celebrated. In the process, she offered young, aspiring women writers around the country an example of the possibilities of achieving both fame and economic reward."

"Pride is a fruitful source of uneasiness. It keeps the mind in disquiet. Too high an opinion of ourselves, involves the desire of impressing others with the same opinion. This is often attended with difficulty. If we do not succeed in inspiring them with an equal idea of our own merits, we shall be expecting more deference and regard than they are inclined to pay. So, pride will be disappointed and offended."

"We speak of educating our children. Do we know that our children also educate us?"

"Mothers, whatever you wish your children to become, strive to exhibit in your own lives and conversation."

"A disposition to dwell on the bright side of character, is like gold to the possessor."

"The glorified spirit of the infant is a star to guide the mother to its own blissful clime."

"[T]he strength of a nation, especially of a republican nation, is in the intelligent and well-ordered homes of the people."

"Should pale death with arrow dread Make the ocean caves our bed, Though no eye of love might see Where that shrouded grave shall be, Thou! who hear'st the surges roll, Deign to save the suppliant soul."

"Cynthia: To be honest, I've been rethinking things lately. I mean, I'm still a Christian, but I'm definitely transitioning. Janis: Really? Is your mom letting you do hormones? Mine won't."

"Raffi: Okay, it's time to make another deposit to my therapy fund."

"Sydney: Imagine the cinematography if Ennis and Jack had been able to live together. Sweeping vistas of their couples therapist's office."

"Ginger: Oh, jeez. Well, uh... maybe you should talk to someone. Cynthia: I thought I was."

"Sydney: [proposing to Mo] Will you do me the honor of paradoxically reinscribing and destabilizing hegemonic discourse with me?"

"Sparrow: Oh my God. I'm a trained professional. I can't believe I didn't see it sooner! The mind games... the use of isolation... the accusations about being unfaithful... the obsessive keeping track... preventing the other person from getting a job... Stuart, we're in an abusive relationship with the Bush administration!"

"Of course I’m delighted that Fun Home has met with such success, but it still strikes me as very unlikely that an odd, cerebral story about a lesbian and her closeted gay suicidal mortician father would have struck a chord with anyone but me."

"Cynthia: Of all the times to come out to your family, I had to do it right before the last presidential debate. Damn that John Kerry! Ginger: Cynthia, I'm sorry your parents are having a meltdown, but it's hardly John Kerry's fault. Cynthia: When he called Mary Cheney a lesbian, I felt like I had been drop-kicked. Ginger: Well, Mary Cheney is a lesbian, and you're a political football."

"Lois: You're never gonna meet anyone hanging around here with the tactical nuclear family."

"Bookstore boss: [to Mo] The self-service kiosks have enabled us to cut down on staff, but some customers still feel the need to speak to an actual human. That's where you come in. Customer: Excuse me, do you carry Jewish New Year cards? Boss: I'm sorry, our New Years cards don't come in till November. But we'll be getting Jewish Christmas cards then, too!"

"Jezanna: Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chain store jobs!"

"Mo: I wish it were me instead of you. Sydney: Yeah. I'm getting the sodium pentothal. You have to go sit with my parents."

"... I couldn’t begin to count the films in which women are overlooked, stereotyped, or treated as little more than eye candy. It was for this reason that cartoonist Alison Bechdel first devised a test to measure women’s representation in fiction; a story passes the Bechdel test if it has two named female characters who talk to each other about something other than a man. But even with such a low bar, fewer than half of best picture winners pass."