Fay Weldon · 256 pages
Rating: (3.6K votes)
“I ran upstairs, loving, weeping. I will run downstairs, unloving, not weeping.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
“even as she says it, sees love drain out of his eyes: and somehow, as a stream, which seeks its own level, it flows over into hers, and her fate is sealed. The less he loves, the more she will.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
“for a man functions best if he ventures out into the world from a domestic setting in which his restless sexual and procreative energies are given liberty.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
“Up there on Olympus, where he’d been raised, where the mountain of reason pierces the sky of the intellect, the talk was all of how the soul suffered if the senses were gratified. Polly Patch would not allow it. She claimed, as the Devil would, that the senses and the soul were one: that gratifying one was to gratify the other.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
“We discuss things, rather than ideas; we exchange information, not theories; we keep ourselves steady by thinking about the particular. The general is frightening.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
“want revenge. I want power. I want money. I want to be loved and not love in return.”
― Fay Weldon, quote from The Life and Loves of a She Devil
Fay Weldon
Born place: in Alvechurch, England, The United Kingdom
Born date September 22, 1931
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“Like the tender fires of stars moments of their life together, that no one knew of or would ever know of, broke upon and illuminated his memory.”
― James Joyce, quote from The Dead
“Hearts are like stones on an ocean beach...And people are like the tides that leave permanent marks on them.”
― Loretta Ellsworth, quote from In a Heartbeat
“Breaking into the house in the middle of the night just wasn't his style. He did his best work in plain view, and, usually, his tongue was doing most of it.
Now that was an interesting thought. Heh.”
― Ilona Andrews, quote from Fate's Edge
“Thomas (his middle name) is a fifth-grader at the highly competitive P.S. 334, the Anderson School on West 84th in New York City. Slim as they get, Thomas recently had his long sandy-blond hair cut short to look like the new James Bond (he took a photo of Daniel Craig to the barber). Unlike Bond, he prefers a uniform of cargo pants and a T-shirt emblazoned with a photo of one of his heroes: Frank Zappa. Thomas hangs out with five friends from the Anderson School. They are “the smart kids.” Thomas is one of them, and he likes belonging. Since Thomas could walk, he has constantly heard that he’s smart. Not just from his parents but from any adult who has come in contact with this precocious child. When he applied to Anderson for kindergarten, his intelligence was statistically confirmed. The school is reserved for the top 1 percent of all applicants, and an IQ test is required. Thomas didn’t just score in the top 1 percent. He scored in the top 1 percent of the top 1 percent. But as Thomas has progressed through school, this self-awareness that he’s smart hasn’t always translated into fearless confidence when attacking his schoolwork. In fact, Thomas’s father noticed just the opposite. “Thomas didn’t want to try things he wouldn’t be successful at,” his father says. “Some things came very quickly to him, but when they didn’t, he gave up almost immediately, concluding, ‘I’m not good at this.’ ” With no more than a glance, Thomas was dividing the world into two—things he was naturally good at and things he wasn’t. For instance, in the early grades, Thomas wasn’t very good at spelling, so he simply demurred from spelling out loud. When Thomas took his first look at fractions, he balked. The biggest hurdle came in third grade. He was supposed to learn cursive penmanship, but he wouldn’t even try for weeks. By then, his teacher was demanding homework be completed in cursive. Rather than play catch-up on his penmanship, Thomas refused outright. Thomas’s father tried to reason with him. “Look, just because you’re smart doesn’t mean you don’t have to put out some effort.” (Eventually, Thomas mastered cursive, but not without a lot of cajoling from his father.) Why does this child, who is measurably at the very top of the charts, lack confidence about his ability to tackle routine school challenges? Thomas is not alone. For a few decades, it’s been noted that a large percentage of all gifted students (those who score in the top 10 percent on aptitude tests) severely underestimate their own abilities. Those afflicted with this lack of perceived competence adopt lower standards for success and expect less of themselves. They underrate the importance of effort, and they overrate how much help they need from a parent.”
― Po Bronson, quote from NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children
“If the left hemisphere of the brain goes on dominating you, you will live a successful life—so successful that by the time you are forty you will have ulcers; by the time you are forty-five, you will have had at least one or two heart attacks. By the time you are fifty you will be almost dead—but successfully dead! You may become a great scientist, but you will never become a great being. You may accumulate enough wealth, but you will lose all that is of worth. You may conquer the whole world like an Alexander, but your own inner territory will remain unconquered.”
― Osho, quote from Intuition: Knowing Beyond Logic
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