People From New York City

"Your world is a sewer, Mr. Stride. One can almost absolve you for being one of its diseases."

"Roy’s cry of horror filled of the universe, more horrible for the indifferent silence that swallowed it up."

"Paranoia, the common cold of neurosis. The paranoiac, perceiving all external stimuli as threat, needs to see his enemies, not merely sense their external presence. Being imaginary, these threats must be fleshed out to visible targets, the more clearly defined the better."

"The smaller the man, the larger his power fantasies."

"Judas/Jake got into the cab and and drove out of shot. “So that’s the evilest man in the whole world ever.” Charity pondered the screen. She dunked a strawberry in champagne. “Talks mean about folks.” “With considerable authority,” Simnel said. “A true believer at one time who would do anything to make need into truth. Now he watches the rest of them doing the same thing over and over again one way or another.”"

"If respectability is the daughter of morality, her jealous sister is blackmail."

"“We’re here with Judas Iscariot on the fringe of the delirious demonstration for Roy Stride. Judas, can you comment on the meteoric rise of Stride and the White Paladins?” Judas reached through the cab window and fetched his cap. “I’d say the hopeless schmucks have found the kind of government they deserve. Always do.”"

"Judas shrugged. “He’s taking their own fear, frustration and anger and selling it back to them with a new ribbon around it. Easy answers, easy targets: out with the Jews and blacks, down with the intellectuals, which means anyone who’s better off or disagrees with them. Slogans, marching bands and the promise of blood. How can he miss?”"

"Roy’s a fuck-up like Hitler. What’s the opposite of fail-safe? Success-safe. These turkeys have got to lose because most of their thinking is off the wall to begin with. Think about it: there’s Adolf rearranging Europe like a hyperactive housewife, shrewd as they come, and still getting his horoscope done every goddamned day, which is like seriously figuring Santa Claus into the national budget. These people are not coming from common sense; they simply can’t think big."

"Hell, there’s no mystery between men and women, except why some poor damn fool like me ain’t figured that out yet."

"“Got no time for games,” Charity told the dog. “Hope you don’t bite.” “Not at all. The hound yawned to his ears. But beware the owner. He thinks.”"

"Coyle knew to its core the essence of Charity Stovall, who had lived her twenty years in the lower echelons of Christian belief, a lurid topography with no middle ground. Her theology was banal but rendered in full color, a Caucasian Green Pastures at one end, smoke, fire, pain—the whole Faustian, Exorcist claptrap at the other."

"You haven’t changed for hundreds of years, and your sins, such as they are, have not grown in complexity. A moment of yes in a lifetime of thou shalt not. Certain punishment out of a steaming Protestant imagination."

"“One can think,” Jake mused over the chessboard. “If thought is desirable. For me it was a curse, an obsession, like chess. Always the intellectual yearning to be the man of action. To be, like Brutus, a fulcrum of history. That was denied me until one day when I—acted. I’ll never know whether I was right at the wrong time for my own sake or wrong at the right time for the sake of history.”"

"The therapists will have a field day and we’ll probably lose hordes to schizophrenia. But cry all they want, stomp around, kick furniture, the human race will get rid of their fairy-tale notions of good, evil and the cosmos, and by God—by Me, I guess—they will grow the hell up."

"Hell might be a strain, she concluded, but you couldn’t beat it for the new and different or the interesting men."

"Lengthy memos were always coming down from somewhere to be read, initialed and passed on. Never less than ten single-spaced pages, they boiled down to the need for efficiency and cutting paperwork."

"Subconsciously aware of the fragility of his artificial reality, the paranoiac must ever reinforce its defenses with more and more elaborate rationale. His virtues must be defined, his enemies painted in primary colors. The basic motive of fear is raised to mystic proportion; a cause, uniform, a symbol. He proclaims his purposes one with God’s. “No—” The central infection inflames and eventually mortifies the entire psyche until any healthy stimulus becomes alien."

"Countries are just like women. Sooner or later everyone loses their cherry and gets to be just another broad on the block."

"Infantile, needing to be the center and reason for creation, the less educated or advantaged subject needs a distorted miraculous theology to support a perilous existence, externally and constantly threatened as it is by “them.”"

"Hard men and women, from Barion’s firsthand recollection: not always thinking of God but seeing Him hard as themselves when they did. Their descendants much the same, not as hard but needing that peculiarly American form of religious ecstasy blended of poverty, ignorance, degenerated mysticism, collected injuries and the need for vengeance."

"Smart eats, stupid starves."

"It wasn’t your usual vacation. But what’s so bad, Char? I’ve seen heaven and you’ve seen hell, and they’re just what? Common sense, funny and horrible with a lot of bullshit thrown in, just like the six o’clock news."

"“If you are in trouble, so am I. Two rowers in a sinking lifeboat telling each other ‘I told you so’ doesn’t keep either from drowning.”"

"Woody had more talent than drive, but a musician, even a poor one, was preferable to a fanatic. He could only assault the ear."

"Sorlij tried to imagine a place less organized than this. The concept was a challenge."

"True believers coming to the fore with the same old theme—don’t you make out you’re better than us—defining a narrow God by what they themselves hated and feared."

"I will not comment on your accent. Similes founder, metaphors fail."

"Honor thy stereotypes, the authors of thy thinking, for without them, thou wouldst have to see."

"Nemesis, come! And you unfeeling stars, I hurl defiance for reply, and cast into the balance for the world to see my soul ’gainst thy insensate cruelty."

"Look, these clowns need a messiah because the truth of the world always goes down easier with a few miracles and a lot of blood. It’s a very old game, the rules don’t change. I’d say Stride is a flaming, fourteen-karat folk hero. Look at this crowd; you’re not talking about contented, mature people. You ever see a happy man who needed to conquer the world?"

"Religion is what you sing on Sunday, Miss Stovall. Your true faith is what you want all week."

"“You must have been an evangelical.” “Tabernacle of the Born Again Savior,” Charity owned with wistful pride. “Not that it helped a whole lot.” “Indeed.” Jake sank again in his chair. “Tabernacle of the…the more shriveled the existence, the more elaborate the credentials. Virtue measured by what you wouldn’t do, at least under scrutiny, and others judged for what they would and got caught at. You don’t want Grace, Miss Stovall. You want to get even.”"

"Was that what all my praying was about? “Lord Amighty, no wonder I am damned.” “No, Miss Stovall. Love and hell are alike in that respect; they are what you bring to them. The script is yours; only the props are furnished.”"

"I was struck by the sense of responsibility shown by everyone in the Vatican, and the weightiness of the issues they dealt with. I came away with a heightened respect for the ordinaries of all the dioceses — the amazing amount of responsibility they have and the commitment they have to their obligations and their people."

"Over 30 years ago, Donald Trump took out full page ads calling for my execution. On the day he was arrested and arraigned, here is my ad in response."

"Airborne combat in Sicily and Italy had been invaluable in preparation for the Normandy operation. We learned what could be done by parachute troops and troop carrier pilots, but, more important, we learned what they could not do. The airborne troops had more than held their own against German infantry, but meeting German armor in good tank country could be disastrous. The airborne-troop carrier team had to be thoroughly trained and honed to a keen edge. Small mistakes could lead to disaster, with airborne troops badly scattered and heavy troop carrier losses. On the other hand, with hard work and thorough training, the team could be made into an extremely effective battle force, a force that could tip the scales to victory in any future combat operation. And although we had made a number of mistakes and learned costly lessons in Sicily, that had been a comparatively small operation. For OVERLORD we would be three airborne divisions, more than 1,300 transports, and 3,300 gliders. It was to be a tremendous undertaking."

"I will measure the effectiveness of my leadership by the ability and willingness of this local Church to call forth, develop and utilize the gifts and talents not only of its priests and religious but all its people."

"Under the little crosses where they rise The soldier rests. Now round him undismayed The cannon thunders, and at night he lies At peace beneath the eternal fusillade."

"I have a rendezvous with Death At some disputed barricade, When Spring comes round with rustling shade And apple blossoms fill the air— I have a rendezvous with Death When Spring brings back blue days and fair."

"I love to think that if my blood should be So privileged to sink where his has sunk, I shall not pass from Earth entirely But when the banquet rings, when healths are drunk,"

"Be mindful of the men they were, and raise Your glasses to them in one silent toast."

"When a tree takes a notion to grow in California nothing in heaven or on earth will stop it."

"Like it or not, a translator has to take liberties. How many depends on closely the translator hews to the words of the text. I’m on the side of the reader, so I’d never produce a literal, word-for-word translation, however faithful. My goal is always to produce a text so smooth that the reader isn’t aware it’s a translation. It should read like a book that Mathieu would have written if he were more fluent in English. So I occasionally take liberties, especially with jokes, slang, and idioms. But thanks to email, I can run my textual sins by the author before committing them to paper. Even after some forty books and screenplays, I still love doing translations."

"(Speaking about his translation work of a diary by Berthe Weill) When it comes to typographical style, Berthe Weill is happily inimitable. She doesn't waste time on line breaks, so passages with a lot of dialogue look like sheets of mud. And she never met an ellipsis she didn't like. French writers use ellipses fairly often, but we avoid them in English because they... look vague... In my early drafts, I eliminated most of the ellipses, but I restored many of them later. That's because Weill's prose rhythm is closer to Machine Gun Kelly than Marcel Proust, and I realized that the ellipses help smoooth out her darting leaps from topic to topic."

"Rodarmor's translation is seamless, rendered with that appearance of effortlessness that only the most gifted and painstaking translators can accomplish."

"My loyalty as a translator is to both the author and the reader, but in a pinch, I try to help the reader."

"The sex scenes were the toughest to translate. Sex is notoriously hard to write about, and no easier to translate. My prose probably falls somewhere between puritanical and pornographic. Maybe sex is just better in French."

"Jokes [are] the bane of every trasnlator's existence."

"My grown-up novels have been translated into several languages, but my relationship with my translators has always been limited to a few e-mails to clear up some point or other. With William Rodarmor, all that changed! He started by telephoning me to introduce himself, and we very quickly built a relationship of trust. And he got passionately involved with the text, wanting to know everything about everything, including somewhat remote elements of the historical context that would better enable him to understand this or that detail. He literally bombarded me with messages and sometimes tracked me to my lair, because he wound up knowing the book better than I did! And he managed it all with great humor."