Richard Fariña · 352 pages
Rating: (2.5K votes)
“god, they say, is love. and some one's got to pass the word.”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“The conscience of my elusive race gives not a fig for me, baby. But I endure, if you know what I mean.”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“Been down so long it looks like up to me” is NOT a quote from Richard Fariña. It his the title of his novel. It is, in fact a quote from the 1928 blues song "I Will Turn Your Money Green".
Doesn't anybody vett these things?”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“All about them the golden girls, shopping for dainties in Lairville. Even in the midst of the wild-maned winter's chill, skipping about in sneakers and sweatsocks, cream-colored raincoats. A generation in the mold, the Great White Pattern Maker lying in his prosperous bed, grinning while the liquid cools. But he does not know my bellows. Someone there is who will huff and will puff. The sophmores in their new junior blazers, like Saturday's magazines out on Thursday. Freshly covered textbooks from the campus store, slide rules dangling in leather, sheathed broadswords, chinos scrubbed to the virgin fiber, starch pressed into straight-razor creases, Oxford shirts buttoned down under crewneck sweaters, blue eyes bobbing everywhere, stunned by the android synthesis of one-a-day vitamins, Tropicana orange juice, fresh country eggs, Kraft homogenized cheese, tetra-packs of fortified milk, Cheerios with sun-ripened bananas, corn-flake-breaded chicken, hot fudge sundaes, Dairy Queen root beer floats, cheeseburgers, hybrid creamed corn, riboflavin extract, brewer's yeast, crunchy peanut butter, tuna fish casseroles, pancakes and imitation maple syrup, chuck steaks, occasional Maine lobster, Social Tea biscuits, defatted wheat germ, Kellogg's Concentrate, chopped string beans, Wonderbread, Birds Eye frozen peas, shredded spinach, French-fried onion rings, escarole salads, lentil stews, sundry fowl innards, Pecan Sandies, Almond Joys, aureomycin, penicillin, antitetanus toxoid, smallpox vaccine, Alka-Seltzer, Empirin, Vicks VapoRub, Arrid with chlorophyll, Super Anahist nose spray, Dristan decongestant, billions of cubic feet of wholesome, reconditioned breathing air, and the more wholesome breeds of fraternal exercise available to Western man. Ah, the regimented good will and force-fed confidence of those who are not meek but will inherit the earth all the same.”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
“this is a nervous little decade we’re playing with”
― Richard Fariña, quote from Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me
Richard Fariña
Born place: in Brooklyn, New York, The United States
Born date March 8, 1937
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― Sylvia Day, quote from Captivated by You
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― Cate Tiernan, quote from Immortal Beloved
“That's why crazy people are so dangerous. You think they're nice until they're chaining you up in the garage.”
― Michael Buckley, quote from The Fairy-Tale Detectives
“It is always assumed by the empty-headed, who chatter about themselves for want of something better, that people who do not discuss their affairs openly must have something to hide.”
― Honoré de Balzac, quote from Père Goriot
“some choices you make with your heart some with your head but when in doubt choose head over heart.... it will keep you alive.
-merry gentry”
― Laurell K. Hamilton, quote from A Caress of Twilight
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