“In the future if my mother tries to shame me with her disapproval, I will let her know in no uncertain terms that I reject her and all of her codependent baggage. I am Codependent No More.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“Maybe careers aren’t something you can really plan for. They just sort of happen, like brown eyes or flat feet. I took one of those career aptitude tests last year, and it showed that I should be a flight attendant or a seamstress. Not a fashion designer or anything, mind you, but a sweatshop worker. Apparently stewardesses and sweatshop workers and I enjoy a lot of the same interests and activities.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“If you are alive and conscious, you are probably codependent.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“I am not a people person.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“I think MacGregor might be a genius. Anyone so oblivious to the horror of the human world must be.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“If you start looking up, they start asking questions.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“Not being a big one for having friends, I had no idea what I was going to do with Aubrey, you know, to entertain him.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“Well, at least I can spare myself the ordeal of a whole battery of personality tests. My personality is poor; that much is clear.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“It’s not a good idea to let on about extreme happy feelings. People get ideas.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“I may never recover. It was like an out-of-body experience. I’m an alien trying on human rituals.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“Much as I usually dislike nice, positive people, I have to admit that Margaret isn’t bad.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“I’m already in the late stages of advanced detachment where my mother is concerned. With a little practice I could feel that way about everyone.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“I haven’t been that happy since I became conscious for the first time, you know, when I became aware of myself and got so uncomfortable and everything.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“I don’t care about this stuff. I’m not even sure I’m a girl. I’m an eye in the sky. I am detached. I’m an idiot.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“It seemed a little risky, enjoying something so… fun, but I couldn’t help it.”
― quote from Alice, I Think
“Meanwhile, Mme Mao and her cohorts were renewing their efforts to prevent the country from working. In industry, their slogan was: "To stop production is revolution itself." In agriculture, in which they now began to meddle seriously: "We would rather have socialist weeds than capitalist crops." Acquiring foreign technology became "sniffing after foreigners' farts and calling them sweet." In education: "We want illiterate working people, not educated spiritual aristocrats." They called for schoolchildren to rebel against their teachers again; in January 1974, classroom windows, tables, and chairs in schools in Peking were smashed, as in 1966. Mme Mao claimed this was like "the revolutionary action of English workers destroying machines in the eighteenth century." All this demagoguery' had one purpose: to create trouble for Zhou Enlai and Deng Xiao-ping and generate chaos. It was only in persecuting people and in destruction that Mme Mao and the other luminaries of the Cultural Revolution had a chance to "shine." In construction they had no place.
Zhou and Deng had been making tentative efforts to open the country up, so Mme Mao launched a fresh attack on foreign culture. In early 1974 there was a big media campaign denouncing the Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni for a film he had made about China, although no one in China had seen the film, and few had even heard of it or of Antonioni. This xenophobia was extended to Beethoven after a visit by the Philadelphia Orchestra.
In the two years since the fall of Lin Biao, my mood had changed from hope to despair and fury. The only source of comfort was that there was a fight going on at all, and that the lunacy was not reigning supreme, as it had in the earlier years of the Cultural Revolution. During this period, Mao was not giving his full backing to either side.
He hated the efforts of Zhou and Deng to reverse the Cultural Revolution, but he knew that his wife and her acolytes could not make the country work.
Mao let Zhou carry on with the administration of the country, but set his wife upon Zhou, particularly in a new campaign to 'criticize Confucius." The slogans ostensibly denounced Lin Biao, but were really aimed at Zhou, who, it was widely held, epitomized the virtues advocated by the ancient sage. Even though Zhou had been unwaveringly loyal, Mao still could not leave him alone. Not even now, when Zhou was fatally ill with advanced cancer of the bladder.”
― Jung Chang, quote from Wild Swans: Three Daughters of China
“The name is Salvatore. As in savior.”
― L.J. Smith, quote from The Awakening / The Struggle
“He spoke rapidly in-between his tender kisses. "I love you. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. The women...I was so scared to touch you. You didn't want me...I couldn't take the pain. I tried to get over you. Every time with them, I was with you. I'm so sorry...I love you.”
― S.C. Stephens, quote from Thoughtless
“Fue así como ocurrió. Lo que antes parecía puro azar adquirió de repente una dimensión diferente.”
― Stieg Larsson, quote from The Millennium Trilogy
“He’s so beautiful,” she said wistfully. “He’s like an angel.”
“Yep,” I agreed flatly. “The one that fell.”
― Karen Marie Moning, quote from Faefever
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