Elliot Chaze
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The Stainless Steel Kimono
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Il gele en enfer
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“But about the gentleman thing.” She waved her glass. “I want to make it plain as the nose on your face. I can stand anything in the book but gentlemen. Because I've spent a lot of time, too much time with them, and I know why gentlemen are what they are. They decide to be that way after they've tried all the real things and flopped at them. They've flopped at women. They've flopped at standing up on their hind legs and acting like men. So they become gentlemen. They've flopped at being individuals. So they say to themselves one fine morning: 'What can I be that's no trouble at all and that doesn't amount to a damned thing, but yet will make everyone look up to me?' The answer's simple. Be a gentleman. Take life flat on your back, cry in private, and then in a well-modulated voice.”
― Black Wings Has My Angel
― Black Wings Has My Angel
“Jeepie said that was why I was always a little bugs the first few days after they let me out of solitary confinement. He said solitary itself was nothing but a room and a cot and you; and the room was a blank to begin with and a blank was comfortable as being asleep or dead. But that if you began filling the room with crazy thoughts you came out of it crazy. Jeepie said perhaps my biggest trouble was I could never forget I'd been to school: “They've taught you that to think is to be smart but my friend there's times when it's smart to be stupid.”
But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster.”
― Black Wings Has My Angel
But no one's immune to thinking. Try drawing a blank for any length of time, emptying your head of everything and still you land on a color, a shape, a personality, a grievance. I can sit here on this cot in my cell and stare at the plaster wall, go absolutely limp in my head, and the story, the story of Virginia and me is there in the plaster.”
― Black Wings Has My Angel
Polls
What shall we read in September, 2019? - Books published Pre-1980
Shiloh, by Shelby Foote
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Topics Mentioning This Author
| topics | posts | views | last activity | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pulp Fiction: April 2018 - Black Wings Has My Angel | 27 | 61 | May 12, 2018 01:52PM |
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