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What I am trying to say is that there is no physical or geographical unity in Texas. Its unity lies in the mind. And this is not only in Texans. The word “Texas” becomes a symbol to everyone in the world.
There’s absolutely nothing to take the place of a good man.
But the more I inspected this American image, the less sure I became of what it is. It appeared to me increasingly paradoxical, and it has been my experience that when paradox crops up too often for comfort, it means that certain factors are missing in the equation.
Because they were not hurt or insulted, they were not defensive or combative. Because their dignity was intact, they had no need to be overbearing, and because the Cooper boys had never heard that they were inferior, their minds could grow to their true limits.
When people are engaged in something they are not proud of, they do not welcome witnesses. In fact, they come to believe the witness causes the trouble.
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Perhaps that is what made me sick with weary nausea. Here was no principle good or bad, no direction. These blowzy women, with their little hats and their clippings, hungered for attention. They wanted to be admired.
These were not mothers, not even women. They were crazy actors playing to a crazy audience.
“Oh, certainly an end. It’s the means—it’s the means. But you’re from the North. This isn’t your problem.” “I guess it’s everybody’s problem. It isn’t local. Would you have another cup of coffee and talk to me about it? I don’t have a position. I mean I want to hear.”
He laughed. “I’m only telling you how hard it is to change a feeling about things. And will you believe that it will be just as hard for Negroes to change their feeling about us as it is for us to change about them? This isn’t new. It’s been going on a long time.”
“If by force you make a creature live and work like a beast, you must think of him as a beast, else empathy would drive you mad. Once you have classified him in your mind, your feelings are safe.” He stared at the river, and the breeze stirred his hair like white smoke. “And if your heart has human vestiges of courage and anger, which in a man are virtues, then you have fear of a dangerous beast, and since your heart has intelligence and inventiveness and the ability to conceal them, you live with terror. Then you must crush his manlike tendencies and make of him the docile beast you want. And
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*****
Weariness flagged me down and I stopped in a pleasant motel. The beds were good but I could not sleep. The gray man walked across my eyes, and the faces of the Cheerladies, but mostly I saw the old man squeezed as far away from me as he could get, as though I carried the infection, and perhaps I did. I came out to learn. What was I learning? I had not felt one moment free from the tension, a weight of savage fear. No doubt I felt it more being newcome, but it was there; I hadn’t brought it. Everyone, white and black, lived in it and breathed it—all ages, all trades, all classes. To them it was
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He doesn’t belong to a species clever enough to split the atom but not clever enough to live in peace with itself.
Who has not known a journey to be over and dead before the traveler returns?
Spain, Thailand
My own journey started long before I left, and was over before I returned. I know exactly where and when it was over. Near Abingdon, in the dog-leg of Virginia, at four o’clock of a windy afternoon, without warning or good-by or kiss my foot, my journey went away and left me stranded far from home. I tried to call it back, to catch it up—a foolish and hopeless matter, because it was definitely and permanently over and finished.
shortcomings: political apathy, environmental degradation, and strident racism.
Beat movement
Thelma and Louise (1991): Two working women set out on their own, with unexpected consequences.
