William Manchester · 992 pages
Rating: (8.6K votes)
“It is the definition of an egoist that whatever occupies his attention is, for that reason, important.”
“There was, however, a difference between his mood and that of the rest of the cabinet. They felt desperate; he felt challenged.”
“If you cannot read all your books, at any rate handle, or, as it were, fondle them—peer into them, let them fall open where they will, read from the first sentence that arrests the eye, set them back on their shelves with your own hands, arrange them on your own plan so that if you do not know what is in them, you will at least know where they are. Let them be your friends; let them at any rate be your acquaintances.”
“Biographer diagnoses reaction to restriction as a tell of true character. Some use even prison as a time of reflection and planning. Others, like Churchill, quickly chafe at missing interaction and opportunity.”
“Today's Europeans and Americans who reached the age of awareness after midcentury when the communications revolution lead to expectations of instantanaiy are exasperated by the slow toils of history. They assume that the thunderclap of cause will be swiftly followed by the lightening bolt of effect.”
“A man can wear out a particular part of his mind by continually using it and tiring it… the tired parts of the mind can be rested and strengthened, not merely by rest, but by using other parts…. It is only when new cells are called into activity, when new stars become lords of the ascendant, that relief, repose, refreshment are afforded.”
“Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary; it fulfils the same function as pain in the human body, it calls attention to the development of an unhealthy state of things.”
“GBS wired Winston: “Am reserving two tickets for you for my premiere. Come and bring a friend—if you have one.” Churchill wired back: “Impossible to be present for the first performance. Will attend the second—if there is one.”61”
“The key to successful extramarital sex, therefore, was discretion. Mrs. Patrick Campbell, perhaps the most outspoken woman in polite society, said dryly: “It doesn’t matter what you do in the bedroom, as long as you don’t do it in the street and frighten the horses.”43”
“Byron wrote his shortest and most eloquent poem as a testament to a titled woman who had taken leave of her husband for a nine-month romp with him: Caroline Lamb, Goddamn.”
“I like to live in the past. I don't think people are going to get much fun in the future”
“the essence of American journalism is vulgarity divested of truth.”
“read three or four books at a time to avoid tedium”—and”
“In the nineteenth century,” he observed, “Jules Verne wrote Round the World in Eighty Days. It seemed a prodigy. Now you can get around it in four, but you do not see much of it on the way.”
“I'm an expert at finding out secrets, but keeping them- especially a secret of this magnitude - is something else.”
“You only had to see a unicorn lay open the side of a centaur once, the ribcage flashing white when the ripped skin flopped down, to swear a mighty oath never to fuck with or even look at another unicorn again. I'm putting down the hearts and fluffy clouds and backing away slowly. Don't want any trouble here. You can have all the rainbows.”
“Even the good guys,' she said, 'can't win all the time.”
“Dance with me,' Win said. 'I know I'm probably making a fool of myself. You're probably thinking, how many times do I have to reject this guy? Can't he take a hint?'
I shook my head.
'But somehow I don't even care. I see you in your red dress, standing by the punch table, and something in me wants to keep trying. I think, she is a person worth knowing.”
“There is only one kind of immorality in fiction, and that is when you write badly.”
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