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He said the threshold of insult is in direct relation to intelligence and security. He said the words ‘son of a bitch’ are only an insult to a man who isn’t quite sure of his mother, but how would you go about insulting Albert Einstein? He was alive then. So you go right on calling me kid if you want to.”
Mary says I share other people’s troubles that don’t exist.
He was a kind of high amateur ancestor man and I’ve always noticed that ancestor people usually lack the qualities of the ones they celebrate.
A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.
Even if teen-age children aren’t making a sound, it’s quieter when they’re gone. They put a boiling in the air around them.
Have any of the great fortunes we admire been put together without ruthlessness? I can’t think of any.
Let’s say that when I was a little baby, and all my bones soft and malleable, I was put in a small Episcopal cruciform box and so took my shape. Then, when I broke out of the box, the way a baby chick escapes an egg, is it strange that I had the shape of a cross? Have you ever noticed that chickens are roughly egg-shaped?”
In poverty she is envious. In riches she may be a snob. Money does not change the sickness, only the symptoms.”
“You know how advice is. You only want it if it agrees with what you wanted to do anyway.”
June is painting and clipping, plans and projects. It’s a rare man who doesn’t bring home cement blocks and two-by-fours and on the backs of envelopes rough out drawings of Taj Mahals.
