The Cosmopolitans Quotes

“Annihilation is a bad strategy, it gives the other nothing to lose.”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans

“The past is never dead. It is not even past.” —WILLIAM FAULKNER”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans: A Novel

“They were both deciding not to be what others wanted them to be but to brand themselves for the world to see. To do their own packaging, so to speak, and to direct their powers to their specific target audiences.”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans

“But the cared for don't realize that on their daily path of neighbors, workmates, and faces on the streets there are those...who sit quietly looking out the window at other people's holiday lights, listening to other people's laughter, and finding the makings of other people's eggnog waiting in the morning trash.”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans

“How could all the people understand the same thing? Was marketing the way to get her family to understand that her life mattered? For the men who ran the theaters to understand that Earl needed a part? Could marketing erase inequality, and let al people's feelings be seen on an elevated plane?”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans

“First I was a little boy in my mother’s house,” he began. “Imitating the voices on the radio. Then one day I didn’t have any mother. I didn’t have any cousins. Because one day they caught me doing whatever with whomever’s son. And from that second on, I did not have any people. I did not belong to anyone. I could not run home because there was no home. You know . . . you know. Somehow I lived. Somehow I got on some bus. Somehow I met Anthony, and he saved me and I moved into this place. And I got a second dream, of being on the stage. My first dream had come true. I had my man. I was set. Then I was waiting for the second dream to happen. But somehow Anthony was gone and then he was married and then he was dead. Why did he have to do that? From then on I have loved this one and that one. Waiting, waiting, any second now there would be this new world. And somehow now I’m old. And I am still in that same apartment. And somehow they won’t let me on their stage. And somehow the world did not change.”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans: A Novel

“What do we want from life? We wish the responsibilities, opportunities, and realities of the new day to be more delightful and enticing than the escape of sleep.”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans: A Novel

“When a person has to put down and pick up their own plate, cook alone and eat alone and wash up alone, then stare at an empty chair, well, there is no breath. Earl”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans: A Novel

“Just then, a reversal occurred in which the key turned suddenly in the lock. That is the most comforting sound in a person’s life, isn’t it? When the other uses his own key to finally come home. Behind”
― Sarah Schulman, The Cosmopolitans: A Novel