Madeleines Quotes
Madeleine Albright has said that there is 'a special place in hell for women who don't help each other.' What are the implications of this statement? Would it be an argument in favor of the candidacy of Mrs. Clinton? Would this mean that Elizabeth Edwards and Michelle Obama don't deserve the help of fellow females? If the Republicans nominated a woman would Ms. Albright instantly switch parties out of sheer sisterhood? Of course not. (And this wearisome tripe from someone who was once our...
Christopher Hitchens
Then one Sunday morning, before winter break, Abby's boyfriend, Whitney, materialized at their kitchen table, reading something called "Of Grammatology". When Madeleine asked what the book was about, she was given to understand by Whitney that the idea of a book being "about" something was exactly what this book was against, and that, if it was "about" anything, then it was about the need to stop thinking of books as being about things.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Well, listen a moment, Monsieur Mayor; I have often been severe in my life towards others. It was just. I did right. Now if I were not severe towards myself, all I have justly done would become injustice. Should I spare myself more than others? No. What! if I should be prompt only to punish others and not myself, I should be a wretched indeed! - Javert to M. Madeleine
Victor Hugo
To her surprise, Madeleine found herself contemplating this proposal. Why not tell her parents everything, curl up in the backseat of the car, and let them take her home? She could move into her old bedroom, with the sleigh bed and the Madeline wallpaper. She could become a spinster, like Emily Dickinson, writing poems full of dashes and brilliance, and never gaining weight.
Jeffrey Eugenides
I Name you Echthroi. I Name you Meg.I Name you Calvin.I Name you Mr. Jenkins.I Name you Proginoskes.I fill you with Naming.Be!Be, butterfly and behemoth,be galaxy and grasshopper,star and sparrow,you matter,you are,be!Be caterpillar and comet,Be porcupine and planet,sea sand and solar system,sing with us,dance with us,rejoice with us,for the glory of creation,seagulls and seraphimangle worms and angel host,chrysanthemum and cherubim.(O cherubim.)Be!Sing for the gloryof the living and the...
Madeleine L'Engle
And it was during this period that Madeleine fully understood how the lover's discourse was of an extreme solitude. The solitude was extreme because it wasn't physical. It was extreme because you felt it while in the company of the person you loved. It was extreme because it was in your head, the most solitary of places.
Jeffrey Eugenides
Almost overnight it became laughable to read writers like Cheever or Updike, who wrote about the suburbia Madeleine and most of her friends had grown up in, in favor of reading the Marquis de Sade, who wrote about anally deflowering virgins in eighteenth-century France. The reason de Sade was preferable was that his shocking sex scenes weren't about sex but politics. They were therefore anti-imperialist, anti-bourgeois, anti-patriarchal, and anti-everything a smart young feminist should be...
Jeffrey Eugenides
Who are you, anyway?" "Just someone who knows, from personal experience, how attractive it can be to think you can save somebody else by loving them." "I could have sworn we just met," Madeleine said. "And that you don't know anything about me." Henry stood up. With a slightly offended air but undiminished confidence, he said, "People save themselves." He left her with that to think about.
Jeffrey Eugenides