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Because of you and others with similar opinions, people like me cannot eat in Paris restaurants (except McDonald’s). I hope you are never the victim of a smoking-related illness or have to care for someone who is—believe me—then ‘talking pretty’ will not be an option.”
announced that she hated the zoo at the Jardin des Plantes because it was cruel to keep the animals in such small cages. She went on and on and then, at the end of the evening, she unlocked her car and released
On the way to Tübingen we passed a smokestack with the word dick written on it.
Hugh said the move will be difficult, especially if they smoke, and Tini said, “No, they have finished their smoking.” She said it as though when born, they’d been allotted a certain number of cigarettes. They’d depleted their supply and now it’s all behind them.
I ate half of it, which amounts to one entire stick of butter.
For me it’s ironic that, on a certain level, all my nineteen-year-old fantasies have come true.
The woman then started in on the building across the street, and Hugh cut her off, saying that she was bothering him just as the noise was bothering her.
Everyone has a plan except for the workmen, who show up whenever they want to.
I turned on the TV last night and was delighted to find Cops, which translates to It’s Worth the Detour.
because they were juveniles, their faces were covered with diamond patterns.
Who are the criminals here? I have absolutely no idea.
We sit around like people in a magazine, but it’s not the sort of magazine I’d ever subscribe to.
I seem to have pulled a muscle in my back. It feels like I’ve been shot and the exit wound is right below my left shoulder blade.
I’m no expert, but it seems that pigeons would like couscous.
Jessye Norman, who placed her hand over her heart and sang as if she were an average devastated woman rather than an opera star.
Everyone’s just sort of waiting for the next big event. Yesterday morning the phone rang and I heard Hugh say, “Oh, my God. You’re kidding. When?”
it’s just been a rough couple of weeks here.”
the new, anti-globalization hippies, who are even more self-righteous than the old ones. The pair moved up the street, and as they passed her one of them spat, “The world is falling apart, so let’s all go shopping, right.”
The French meteorologists have gone on strike, meaning that no one knows what the forecast will be from one day to the next.
“He can’t even come out of his cave.” Who would I have thought he was talking about?
I understood her fear, but is that really the way to sell a sofa bed?
“I call it a thing,” he said, “because I don’t want to say the word for what it is.
Mainly it just seems a lot quieter than usual. When someone is loud or overly joyful people stare for a moment, pursing their lips, and then they turn away.
The volume control is broken on my hotel television. I turned on CNN as soon as I got into the room and heard, along with everyone else on my floor, the newscaster screaming that
wanted her to display a sign reading HATE-FREE ZONE. She said she’d rather not and they got angry at her, thus betraying the spirit of the sign they were asking her to hang in her window.
Buying things you don’t want or need has become a patriotic duty,
The hotel feels like an indoctrination center.
One of the panelists was the editor of Good Housekeeping, who reflected our new seriousness by placing the Stars and Stripes atop the traditional gingerbread house gracing the December cover.
Made from animal fat and sugar, the sculpture literally embodied the term bad taste. “It was nicer last week,” the waiter reflected. “A few days ago it started to melt, and some of the walls have fallen in.”
December 13, 2001 Paris On Friday we’re supposed to receive our first euros, which will come in little 100-franc packets distributed by the post office and the Bank of France.
Everything not pictured in our guidebook fades away once the sun sets. It’s as if the country has run out of both paint and lightbulbs.
You just want to put the entire city in a bathtub and take to it with a wire brush.
Over the past few years I’ve fallen deeper into the luxury pit.
One moment he was discussing the new book contract and the next thing I knew, he was in a cab with Ray Bradbury and Zero Mostel.
Every day feels the same, in part because every day looks the same. Again yesterday it was cold and cloudy, the sky the flat gray color of a nickel.
The husband was honey-colored and spoke with an accent I couldn’t identify. He was maybe in his late sixties, but his face was unlined and surprised-looking.
listening as the guy behind us crabbed at his wife. Actually, crabbed is too gentle a word. He screamed at her: “For God’s sake, will you just shut up!”
You don’t just suddenly become an award-winning asshole.
He said that the French invented both laziness and the belief that rules were meant to be broken, and I wondered if he was saying that because he’s Swiss.
she had the eyes of a man. They’re heavily lashed but somehow seem to contain masculine information.
“Your agent says you haven’t got the time, but I suspect you do.”
at the Dallas airport, I saw a sign reading PATRIOTIC T-SHIRTS 50% OFF. That pretty much represents the national mood. Tax time is here and people are realizing that pride costs money.
The dumbest words ever spoken in New York are “I think I’ll wear my new shoes.”
The food kept coming and went from the sublime to the ridiculous: octopus and beets followed by goose-liver ice cream and wild strawberries topped with rosemary foam.
is the second-largest city in Ireland. I’m not sure what part of town we wound up in, but it was full of teenage mothers leaving fast-food restaurants. At Hillbilly’s Fried Chicken a lot of the moms had nose rings. They looked to be around sixteen, all of them chubby and most of them accompanied by their mothers. It was the same story at Wimpy’s and Supermac’s, where three generations stood on the sidewalks sharing sacks of fried food.
It’s de-crudded long before it reaches the still, but they made it sound as if the average Scotch bottle includes a few used Band-Aids and at least one cigarette butt.
“I’m starting to see a pattern here, Paisley, and I don’t like it.”
wasp is one thing, but bumblebees don’t hurt anyone. Like ladybugs, they’re all about love.
It was like a terrible secret that set me apart from normal happy people who could eat peanuts and make jokes.
On the bright side, I think I can write something much better than Me Talk Pretty. And if it fails and no one buys it, I can really feel good about myself.
