Telling Quotes (page 182)
I didn't know shorthand either. This meant I couldn't get a good job after college. My mother kept telling me nobody wanted a plain English major. But an English major who knew shorthand would be something else again. Everybody would want her. She would be in demand among all the up-and-coming young men and she would transcribe letter after thrilling letter. The trouble was, I hated the idea of serving men in any way. I wanted to dictate my own thrilling letters.
Sylvia Plath
PANDARUSYou are such a woman! A man knows not at what ward youlie. CRESSIDAUpon my back, to defend my belly; upon my wit, to defendmy wiles; upon my secrecy, to defend mine honesty; my mask, todefend my beauty; and you, to defend all these; and at all thesewards I lie at, at a thousand watches. PANDARUSSay one of your watches. CRESSIDANay, I'll watch you for that; and that's one of thechiefest of them too. If I cannot ward what I would not have hit, I can watch you for telling how I took the...
William Shakespeare
Yeah,” Chaz says. “You know, when you packed up all your stuff and left his ass high and dry, I thought finally. A woman with some moral fiber. Little did I know that all he’d need to win you back was a big diamond ring and few crocodile tears. I really expected bigger things from you, Lizzie. Tell me something. Are you going to wait until the invitations have actually gone out before you admit to yourself that Luke is that last guy you ought to be spending the rest of your life with? Or are...
Meg Cabot
A beautiful and binding morning. The world outside begins to breathe. See clouds arriving without warning. I need you here to shelter me. If I could make these moments endless. If I could stop the winds of change. If we just keep our eyes wide open. Then everything would stay the same. And I know that only time will tell me how. We'll carry on without each other. So keep me awake for every moment. Give us more time to be this way. We can't stay like this forever. But I can have you next to me...
Josh Groban
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money -- if a gun is held to his head.
P. J. O'Rourke
And what is written well and what is written badly...need we ask Lysias or any other poet or orator who ever wrote or will write either a political or other work, in meter or out of meter, poet or prose writer, to teach us this?" What is good, Phdrus, and what is not good...need we ask anyone to tell us these things?
Robert M. Pirsig
A man who tells secrets or stories must think of who is hearing or reading, for a story has as many versions as it has readers. Everyone takes what he wants or can from it and thus changes it to his measure. Some pick out parts and reject the rest, some strain the story through their mesh of prejudice, some paint it with their own delight. A story must have some points of contact with the reader to make him feel at home in it. Only then can he accept wonders.
John Steinbeck
It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is of the very essence of dreams...No, it is impossible; it is impossible to convey the life-sensation of any given epoch of one's existence--that which makes its truth, its meaning--its subtle and penetrating...
Joseph Conrad