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as varied in color as the tulips of Amsterdam.
For however decisive the Bolsheviks’ victory had been over the privileged classes on behalf of the Proletariat, they would be having banquets soon enough.
Russian Association of Proletarian Writers.
But he would no sooner have interrupted Mikhail on his feet than Vivaldi on his violin.)
how long did it take for them to fashion coins, crowns, and swords? That unholy trinity to which the common man was enslaved for the next one thousand years.”
“Sometimes,” Nina clarified, “everybody tells you something because they are everybody. But why should one listen to everybody? Did everybody write the Odyssey? Did everybody write the Aeneid?” She shook her head then concluded definitively: “The only difference between everybody and nobody is all the shoes.”
For centuries champagne has been used to launch marriages and ships. Most assume this is because the drink is so intrinsically celebratory; but, in fact, it is used at the onset of these dangerous enterprises because it so capably boosts one’s resolve.
To be a step ahead in matters of romance requires constant vigilance. If one hopes to make a successful advance, one must be mindful of every utterance, attend to every gesture, and take note of every look. In other words, to be a step ahead in romance is exhausting.
If patience wasn’t so easily tested, then it would hardly be a virtue.
“I apologize,” he said unapologetically,
a form of inverted hyperbole—an exaggerated diminution of the facts
But the Russians were the first people to master the notion of sending a man into exile at home.
I fear that the force of her convictions will interfere with the joys of her youth.”
The very moment he looked out from under his covers, he met existence with a scowl, knowing it to be a cold and unforgiving condition.
And when there were no listeners to be found, they lined up at the bar like gulls on the rocks and squawked all at once.
he had perfected the art of withholding his insights, forgoing his witticisms, curbing the use of metaphors, similes, and analogies—in essence, exercising every muscle of poetic restraint.
four stalks of celery lying in an orderly row waited like Spartans to meet their fate.
“Allow me to tell you what is inevitable. What is inevitable is that Life will pay Nina a visit too. She may be as sober as St. Augustine, but she is too alert and too vibrant for Life to let her shake a hand and walk off alone. Life will follow her in a taxi. It will bump into her by chance. It will work its way into her affections. And to do so, it will beg, barter, collude, and if necessary, resort to chicanery.
with the efficiency of the guillotine.
she was so surprised her eyes almost came into alignment.
This is the first seamstress joke I recall
silence can be an opinion,”
“Somewhere between where the wheat is grown and the bread is eaten.”
“Hollywood is the single most dangerous force in the history of class struggle.”
“At the greatest cost! But do you think the achievements of the Americans—envied the world over—came without a cost? Just ask their African brothers.
The closest he has come to South America is when he fell down a flight of mahogany stairs.
Excellent
I’m quite fond of being left behind. It always gives me a whole new perspective on wherever it was I thought I was leaving.
“There are no more sympathetic souls than strangers.
Because when Fate hands something down to posterity, it does so behind its back.”
the tenure of friendships has never been governed by the passage of time.
The two players then go back and forth until one of them fails to come up with a fitting example in a suitable interval of time
Andrea Lynn Goldie and I.
Why, many Western observers wondered, would over a million citizens stand in line to see the corpse of a tyrant? The flippant said it must have been to ensure that he was actually dead;
But in the end, it has been the inconveniences that have mattered to me most.”
slips of paper flew about the dining room like pheasants at the crack of a rifle.
For a thousand years, civilizations the world over have recognized the head of the table as a privileged spot. Upon seeing a formally set table, one knows instinctively that the seat at the head is more desirable than those along the sides—because it inevitably confers upon its occupant an appearance of power, importance, and legitimacy. By extension, one also knows that the farther one sits from the head, the less powerful, important, and legitimate one is likely to be perceived.
Huh? Why?
As such, what was most likely to ensue was a scrum for the head, animated by accusations, recriminations, fisticuffs, and possibly gunfire.
But the Communist Party was not a “State of Nature.” Quite to the contrary, it was one of the most intricate and purposeful constructions ever manufactured by man. In essence: the hierarchy of all hierarchies.
like any good bureaucrat, he knew how to type with his eyes closed.
if one did not master one’s circumstances, one was bound to be mastered by them; and the second was Montaigne’s maxim that the surest sign of wisdom is constant cheerfulness.
a Norwegian, a Dane, a Swede, or a Finn.
Hilarious
For as it turns out, one can revisit the past quite pleasantly, as long as one does so expecting nearly every aspect of it to have changed.
