“In reality, there is no materialist like the artist, asking back from life the double and the wastage and the cost on what he puts out in emotional usury.”
“I hope I'll never get ambitious enough to try anything. It's so much nicer to be damned sure I could do it better than other people - and I might not could if I tried...”
“It was not, Zelda wrote, prosperity or the softness of life, or any instability that marred the war generation; it was a great emotional disappointment resulting from the fact that life moved in poetic gestures when they were younger and had since settled back into buffoonery.”
“It is sadder to find the past again and find it inadequate to the present than it is to have it elude you and remain forever a harmonious conception of memory.”
“He fought for his very survival. If he fought dirty sometimes that does not diminish the fact that he refused to give up.”
“I was in love with a whirlwind and I must spin a net big enough to catch it,”
“Zelda was a creature who overflowed with activity, radiant with desire to take from life every chance her charm, youth, and intelligence provided so abundantly.”
“It’s the first time I’ve seen early morning in a terribly long time— The sun all yellow and red, like a huge luminous peach hanging on a black shadow-tree—just visible thru the mist—”
“Sweetheart, please don’t worry about me— I want to always be a help—You know I am all yours and love you with all my heart.”
“He cried the relief he felt at finally seeing the pattern, the way all the stories fit together—the old stories, the war stories, their stories—to become the story that was still being told. He was not crazy; he had never been crazy. He had only seen and heard the world as it always was: no boundaries, only transitions through all distances and time.”
“if the gospels had been identical to each other, word for word, this would have raised charges that the authors had conspired among themselves to coordinate their stories in advance, and that would have cast doubt on them.”
“It is not true that suffering ennobles the character; happiness does that sometimes, but suffering, for the most part, makes men petty and vindictive.”
“Loyalty looks simple... but it ain't.”
“A heckler once interrupted Nikita Khrushchev in the middle of a speech in which he was denouncing the crimes of Stalin. “You were a colleague of Stalin’s,” the heckler yelled, “why didn’t you stop him then?” Khrushschev apparently could not see the heckler and barked out, “Who said that?” No hand went up. No one moved a muscle. After a few seconds of tense silence, Khrushchev finally said in a quiet voice, “Now you know why I didn’t stop him.” Instead of just arguing that anyone facing Stalin was afraid, knowing that the slightest sign of rebellion would mean certain death, he had made them feel what it was like to face Stalin—had made them feel the paranoia, the fear of speaking up, the terror of confronting the leader, in this case Khrushchev. The demonstration was visceral and no more argument was necessary.”
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