"Are you going to be afraid of the facts?" he said. "And you a scholar?"

"I don't think I did it in malice. I hope not. But I was bitterly unkind to her."

"Happily" said he, "a fact is a fact, and your state of mind won't alter it by a hair's breadth. Let's go now and have the truth at all hazards." (more Gaudy Night...)

I had Latka Gravas for a cab driver today. He had a really cute precise voice--sort of sounded like he was beeping.

Me: "So, may I ask...are you new?"
He: "Yes. In the US...two. Two months."
Me: "Ahh."
He: "For cab...one, two, three...seven days. Today is seventh day."
Me: "Ahh, I see. Just wondering."
He: "I am in Chicago three months now."
Me: "Wait--"
He: "I like very much, Chicago. Three months in Chicago."

The only product I know that is (at least where I buy it) more expensive in bulk: Scott toilet tissue. I've calculated the costs many different times, but it always comes up cheaper in the single rolls. There's a lesson there, not sure what it is.

Leonard Bernstein's MASS

Cahn Auditorium, Northwestern University
November 14, 2009

I have been familiar with Leonard Bernstein's MASS--"a theater piece for singers, players and dancers" commissioned for the opening of the Kennedy Center in 1971--for a long time through its music only. I do not think I'm at all alone in this. It was not performed much until recent years, and as far as I know there are no visual recordings of the first performances--for a long time there was only one audio recording, which was more popular than the production itself. This explosion of theater (MASS is staged with over 200 performers, including a brass band, orchestra, rock band, children's and adult choirs, and dancers) existed for me as "just" music.

I grew up over-listening to the album my parents bought after seeing it at the Kennedy Center. I listened to it when my mom played it and on my own, out of our heavy sand-filled speakers, in headphones. When I went to college I had bits of it on mix cassette tapes with me. I had never seen it performed until this weekend and was really curious to see--hear--how it felt.

MASS is a challenge, giving people something to debate forever in Bernstein's absence. I can understand why people feel dared to recreate it these days. For myself, I love it but also find it cheesy and corny at times, not just dated; feel it relies on a reaching and sentimental twist to find its ending amidst a lot of devolving hyperbole. I also find it incredibly beautiful, especially in its details--more beautiful, the more closely you look at it.

MASS is also, I have come to believe, fundamentally sad. There is rebellion and catharsis, but not a lot of joy. Its anti-war themes seem less strong than a kind of personal sadness, from the increasingly well-known "Simple Song" (a perfect piece of music) to "Thank You," in which the singer grieves for a loss of feeling and gratitude. It feels old at times, but not always wise.

The desire is to take MASS apart, enjoy the bits that move and overwhelm, instead of subject oneself to the whole denim-clad, finger-snapping theater experience, but either way, I finally got to do it this weekend. The Northwestern production had too much to do--catch me up as well as woo.

One thing the performance highlighted is that MASS is difficult to perform not just because of the sheer, over populated (and non-intermissioned) spectacle, but because it requires an incredibly powerful lead in "the Celebrant." He must deliver the show-stopper first--start the piece at 100 mph with "Simple Song," which requires great precision and mature control to not let it careen sentimentally out of your hands. After that, the Celebrant has to act with most of the focus on others until the end, when he dives into a mad scene and the ending, not to mention (hah) that the part is for a baritone but veers high into what seems like tenor territory. The Celebrant is isolated, has little scripted interaction with others.

Alan Titus sang the role in the original recording, and he seems to own the part more than other singers own roles they originate, in part from having the field to himself for a long time. The Celebrant in the Northwestern production, Andrew Howard, struggled with "Simple Song" and other bits in the first half (he was often flat), but gained traction in the latter, and especially in the ending, when there is more to do onstage.

The same might be true of the performance as a whole: it did best as it got bigger and louder (although the dancers were especially good all the way through). There is not much middle ground in MASS--it goes from quiet to loud and back like somebody playing with a volume dial. The music is not served well by American Idol-y swooping and sliding, so there were parts that felt shrill and showbiz and obfuscated the pleasure of the music. The microphones (some soloists had microphones, some had headsets) were more distracting than I expected, undercutting the theatrical dynamic of the piece--they did not seem like people in church, moved to sing. It all created a funny convergence, though. Parts of MASS are shrill and showbizzy. The cumulative effect of the performance's energy at its biggest was (as the friend I went with put it) that of a rave, a Rent-y rave, which doesn't feel quite right to me (Bacchinalian rather than rebellious?). The lyrics in this performance had been toned down, with the blessings of Bernstein's daughter--gone, for instance, was the ringing phrase "local vocal yokels," as far as I could hear, from "The Word of the Lord." (Although that also meant that phrases like "his Bible and his breviary" became just "his Bible," which made me sad--I used to roll that world around in my head.)

The saddest realization that arose from seeing MASS rather than just listening to it came while watching the ending, which was obviously resolving more than lines of melody and musical themes. The last line is delivered by the Celebrant, who turns to the audience, breaking the fourth wall, and says (as a priest would), "The mass has ended; go in peace." It felt wincey--from the best of intentions--and glib, demanding our reaction. MASS uses the structure of the Catholic mass to great effect, but the journey of the Celebrant wants more meat to it with all those highs and lows--it does not feel peaceful or resolved itself. It's kind of thin.

I felt guilty for feeling disengaged, as if I were betraying my fondness for the piece and all the years I liked it when MASS wasn't fashionable. Except that I still love it. Since Saturday I have been listening--in addition to the Alan Titus recording--to parts of the recent Marin Alsop recording with Jubilant Sykes as the Celebrant, enjoying its crisp precision, although I'm not quite sure what I think of Sykes.

I don't know what to do in general with the piece--what do you do with something that is so good at being sad? And showed its age right from the start? That has an addictive quality that doesn't feel entirely healthy? Which is so spectacularly hooky and rhythmic? (You know these beautiful young NU students will hum "doo-bing-doo-bong-doo-bing-doo-bang-doo-bang-doo-BONG" at random moments for the rest of their lives.) It's a rough piece of music to be engaged with--you have to admire Bernstein for that.

Thanks to Kerry Reid for the ticket/company!

if you've never heard

Here is Julie London smoking through the "Mickey Mouse March," the strangest collision of sexy and something that's not supposed to be sexy I've ever heard. It feels like the song must have jump-started puberty for many, many younguns.

The Stress Bomb: One packet tangerine EmergenC, 3 oz. Coke, 1 oz. seltzer. Sip it through a paper straw at the soda fountain and twirl on your stool.

oh I liked it

I finally visited the new Renzo Piano-designed wing of the Art Institute, and I loved it. I was surprised to have such a strong reaction, but that's part of why it felt wonderful.

The primary impression I retain is of light: filtering through glass ceilings, screens, shades and elevators, saturating the walls and floors, overlapping planes defining space with rectangles and squares (the right angles are just grand). I love that the energy of the project--or so it seems--appears to have been spent on answering the most important questions. The design of the building feels intelligent, demonstrably serving function first. Sun piercing hotly through skylights isn't right, nor are dark corners; this building seems to avoid both. It feels like it is turned inside out from a regular building. Not in a Pomp-i-doo way--it's just missing the usual pitfalls that plague spaces, especially exhibition spaces. I love the layers of glass and screens. In order to achieve a focused, but extremely complicated goal--gathering light, dispersing it as evenly as possible, keeping the space not too hot or cool--it husbands its resources and gets the job done, without a lot of sops to architectural ego or plumage. I don't mean that in a howardrourke-y way--more that it feels honest. The visibly complicated bits feel like they are in the right place. All that harvested north light is just delicious and it is (again) very very different from the aggressive sunlight you might get through so much glass. It is managed.

I have been trying hard to remember, but I do not think that I have been back to the Art Institute since I worked there, which means nine years. That hardly seems possible, but I think it is so. Being there again, seeing art with which I forgot I had such a strong everyday relationship, was a rather overwhelming experience, and a happy one too. Being able to visit the Von Gogh bedroom or Ando screen room or Beckmann nude when the mood struck was a great perq.

Stodgy, but good

(recipe made from working backward from amount of choc chips in the freezer)

* Cream 1 stick of unsalted butter with scant 1/2 c. white sugar and 1/2 c.+ dark brown sugar * then beat in: one egg -- 1 t. vanilla, 1/2 t. salt, 1/2 t. baking soda, 1/4 c. cocoa -- 1/2 c. flour -- 2 c.+ oatmeal -- 6 oz. bittersweet Ghiradelli chocolate chips. * Bake at 350 for 12? minutes.

Edited to add: I think I over-oatmealed (re: stodgy). But still...good.

We interrupt this gap of not blogging to note that Leman's football mints--a new treat to me--are really good (I see that they used to be made by Peerless in Chicago before they closed, but now are being made in Texas). My mom, being an Indiana-raisedling, clued me in. Thanks, mom.

Shelley Winters wrote in one of her biographies (I think it was she) that while sad and sobbing over some breakup she wore out her record of Doris Day's "April in Paris" listening to it over and over. It really is a great, heartbreaking performance of the song, skirting the edges of sentimentality, but powerful and right out there. Especially in the held notes. You get the feeling she really gets to be herself in this one.

I am seriously thinking about trying to go to the TCM Classic Film Festival in April, if I can do it super way-cheaply, and if my ass can be accommodated by the theater seat widths of Grauman's, the Egyptian, and the Roosevelt Hotel. I am spectacularly overdue for a visit to the west coast, for many reasons, and I dream of a somewhat leisurely trip that might include northern and southern California, as well as the PNW. Just putting it out to the universe...feel like I should do this.

Coyote So Ugly

I love watching movies in appropriate locales. I saw Rudy in South Bend, Ocean's Eleven in Vegas. Last month I watched Coyote Ugly in New Jersey. It was perfect. Perfectly bad!

I think Coyote Ugly might be one of the more underratedly (bad) bad movies out there (striking a rhetorical pose to just get to the next idea here). I love to watch it. It's not a what-the-fuck-are-they-doing fun/bad movie like Showgirls in which people make baffling decisions in every possible scenario, it's a Frankenstein of a movie that sews together clichés wholesale, every stitch glaring at you. It is aggressively derivative. The padding in the movie--the batting that fills it out--is what we woulda called Jiggle, back in the Aaron Spelling days. Endless freakin jiggle atop the bar, only it's really more like Gyrate. Many many many bellybuttons.

You get a lot of Flashdance in Coyote Ugly--motherless workin girl finding artistic success you just know she deserves (esp. at age 21), while working a job that allows us to ogle her for 100 minutes and vindicate the impropriety of watching her along with the movie's characters as they justify her (temporary) involvement in a basically salacious activity to reach her goals. (The movie is very Flashdance, down to all the fog and mists--there is even a scene in which the main character, Violet, swipes some hiphop for her musical compositions, à la Jennifer Beals swiping breakdancing moves for her big finale.) You get a lot of Cocktail, including bottle-flipping. You get a lot of Working Girl--outer borough girl making it in Manhattan.

You get a lot of cinematic archetypes--such as the Slightly Dykey Den Mother, with Maria Bello as the bar owner who is so relentlessly worldly wise and tough--with one episode of vulnerability that proves it--that it starts to seem like she's just trying to get through the movie as fast as she can (probably true). You get the gaggle of fellow Whatevers--dancer/bartenders, in this case--who are more outrageous/sexual/practiced than our protagonist, so she doesn't have to be, and the gaggle of hometown friends who are more working class with thicker accents, so she doesn't have to be. You get the struggling overeating working class single dad (John Goodman) who has his coworkers make a public gesture of good luck for his daughter. You even get a very weird final scene in which a male character engages in the salacious girl activity in question, turning it on its head, like Jan Wenner aerobicizing at the end of Perfect--in this case, Goodman jokingly being an outrageous Coyote Ugly bartenderess and dancing on the bartop.

Watching the movie is like watching a brazen shoplifter, your mouth open at what they'll steal next. The movie mostly steals Flashdance, though, down to a fundamental assurance that no woman is taken advantage of by the gyrating (the official summary describes them as "sexy, resourceful women"). Also in the ending, which tells us she's Made It, in this case by having Leann Rimes sing the shitty songs Violet writes. She wins, she wins. Elizabeth Gilbert must be proud.

today's get-rich scheme

Unemployment trading cards. Unemployment all-stars! Endorsements, shoe contracts, fantasy unemployment leagues. Dole video games. I'm gonna be rich.

The thing people should point out more about recycling is how satisfying it is. I mean, the actual act, not (exactly) in a larger, do-gooding sense. It is an extremely satisfying activity for the nudgey mind--fabuous fun to send packaging and all its tyranny back from whence it came. No matter what it is--mayonnaise jars, birth control pill containers, seltzer cans--it all goes back the same way. Collecting like things together ruthlessly, regardless of origin. It's even more satisfying, somehow, with boxes. Not corrugated boxes, but the thin boxes that so much stuff is packaged in--cookies, Bounce sheets, frozen food, medicines, whatever. I love to break them down, take away their power to take up so much room, and send them back on their way. It kind of gives you a little of your own back, as a consumer, feeling like you're decimating all the elaborate attempts to win your attention and turning it back into wood pulp. Lots of immediate gratification.

I think I may have found my fav King of the Hill episode, at least for now: the season 8 Christmas episode, when Hank drives furniture out to his mother's in a huge truck. The scene when Dale shoots his way out of the back done bout killed me. Or it was 1:43 a.m. and everything was funny, but more likely both.

I wish this blog weren't PG-13, otherwise I could go into detail about a very vivid dream I had about Steve Martin last night. Can't stop snickering! He was newly single. Later in the dream I saw him in a match.com ad--they had snagged him in a celebrity coup--and I thought, how clever. He was banjo-playing and kind of (through the ad) showing how single people are all the same out there, looking, and here's his particular goofy charming skill set. Hah!

weather schmeather

I find the Weather Channel to be a grave disappointment. I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say: "I'm such a nerd! I love watching the Weather Channel!" But I'm not buying it. THERE IS NO NERDY VIRTUE THERE.

The Weather Channel actually misses an opportunity to be a repository of nerdy obsessive fun. As I once heard somebody say at a research conference, any time you need a news story, open up the census report and you will have it. Certainly weather is the same? It is always, by definition, happening. The fun is figuring out what is happening where. There is a whole planet full of weather every day!

The Weather Channel doesn't show that off well. It's very huckstery for a channel devoted to such a previously decided topic. The anchors are jolly and feeb and vague and the graphics don't well serve the data management--it's like bad local news weather segment 24 hours a day. I wish it were smarter. There is so much to know about what's happening in the world and the Weather Channel never makes me curious about it. Not to mention (on the other hand) I can sometimes have a hard time getting local weather on the station when I'm on the road, depending on where I am. I think in lots of areas of the country you actually can't use the Weather Channel to get your weather--you just wait hopelessly as they talk about the rain expected for this year's Masters in Augusta. That's neither nerdy fun nor, actually, remotely helpful. Seems pretty lame.

The worst part are the one-hour shows, such as When Weather Changed History (the title of which continues to bother me--don't they mean "Affected"?) or It Could Happen Tomorrow. It could happen tomorrow--really? It could? Earthquakes sunamis floods fires? Don't they already happen? It's revealing that the first episode of It Could Happen Tomorrow was about the potential of a hurricane hitting New Orleans and made just before Katrina--and still there is a need for this show. Weren't there 1,000,000 stories from Katrina? Aren't there still? I just don't get the appeal of watching Ends of Days shows on the Weather Channel. It's like 2012 without the expensive CGI when the real news is happening elsewhere unattended.

Maybe I'm missing a corner of real nerdy fun on the Weather Channel, other than drinking games. Maybe I need to play a drinking game to find it.

why I love TCM

Tonight TCM is showing four films that showcase the title sequence work of Saul Bass (Vertigo, North by Northwest, Anatomy of a Murder and Bunny Lake Is Missing). I want to be Saul Bass when I grow up. Period full stop.

very very colorful food I had in Baltimore

Thanks Hanne!

I'm just going to say it

1. If the phrase "pitched a reality show" shows up in somebody's biography, it seems like their file should be flagged, flagged like somebody's who has sold crack to infants. Cripes.

2. I have never gotten over the disappearance of Marshall Field's and it's starting to look like I never will. Screw Macy's and their sans serif coup d'etat.

3. I have absolutely no cynicism about pesto, a good 10-15 years after it hit menus hard. There is every reason to be cynical about it, or sick of it, but I am never anything but thrilled to find it in my food.

4. I cannot deal with Cirque du Soleil's goofy nouveau nouns and their gratuitous diacritical marks. Koozå...what the hell. Tell me that ring over the A is necessary. Somebody in Scandinavia needs that ring.

Cranky cranky happy cranky.

I am not a wholesale fan of Shakezpeare in Luv, despite its charms, and Paltrow Issues erode the experience further, but I am an enormous sucker for the last three minutes, including this shot.* Sometimes I'll watch the ending a bunch of times in a row. It is very Tidy, probably too much, but as it wraps things up it also opens new things, hints at the worlds past the ending. It doesn't rely on (just) the last clinch/tearful parting to do its dirty denoumental work.

Good endings can redeem/make a whole film. Birdy has a great last shot. Truly Madly Deeply has an amazing ending and an amazing last shot. Moonstruck's great ending has force because it ends in the morning, lit with morning kitchen light. Bull Durham has a great ending because it saves the happy sex for the end, rather than the middle. The ending of Brief Encounter--the real ending, when she goes back to her husband--is fabulous and full of power.

Being There ruins its ending by tacking on bloopers. The last shot of The 400 Blows probably made me cry when I saw it for the first time in college, but now it seems cheesy thinking about it. The Fugitive's ending doesn't quite do it for me (the convention confrontation, I mean). The most fucked-up ending in the history of the world has to be Grease, a plot twist that I am still making my peace with, thirty years after seeing it for the first time.

Much more to say about all this, just a-thinkin.

* Part of the appeal is that I am a huge sucker for anything in movies involving pens and ink, although I wonder about its authenticity in this film. I do like the fact that the movie makes it clear how messy writing is when you're using pen and ink. All over your fingers.

god, I love my dishwasher

And not (just) because it washes my dishes and even disinfects them when I want them so. It is because it creates flow in the kitchen; opens up a box of space that lets movement happen, lets dishes start to march through the dirty-to-clean cycle by opening up some crucial room. Especially in a small kitchen. Owning a place to have Dirty Things until they become Clean is half the battle. The fact that unloading the dishwasher is more onerous than loading it is a testament to where that activity falls in the cycle--starting over--it's harder--but it all still works.

Laundry, however: I don't have figured out. Still. My Ved Mehta-sized autobiography is going to be centered around laundry.

yayayayay! *kermit arms*

How fabulous! My mother's best friend from childhood just sent me (yay!) a beautiful bag of bulghur wheat and her recipe for tabouli, which for me remains the first, the only, the best tabouli, the shining tower of tabouli, from when I first tasted it in my teens. That's a lot of pressure to put on a recipe, but still--I am so glad to have it. Especially as this kind of recipe is really much more about technique than anything else, and now I get to know how Joan does it. Thank you!!

Support the Soup and Bread Cookbook!

This cookbook -- a wonderful project involving three very talented friends (Martha -- Sheila -- Paul) is a link well worth clicking and supporting. I think I have a family recipe in the book. Here are recent posts regarding the project, including an ask for more funds to help make it happen. And here is the Soup and Bread blog to show how it worked, real-time. A happy thing, however you look at it!

The most fabulously sexist film: Boys' Night Out (1962), in which four men, including James Garner and Tony Randall, set up a sex pad in the city and "share" Kim Novak. Garner (the only bachelor) falls for Novak only to be ultimately betrayed by the fact that she is a sociologist rather than a slut, but it still all works out in the end. Having said that, may I point out that Garner is at his most spectacularly delicious in the film; he is like a shiny chocolate, creamy and luscious and with great snap in the tooth. What a beautiful man!

really big cellphones make movies go even faster!

!!!

"You don't understand," he said.
"Believe me, Jimmie I do." Ned was suddenly gentle, there were even tears in his eyes. It would have taken the most cynically dispassionate observer to discern any hint of complacency in his tone when he added, "Life is cruel and we do terrible things to each other."
Barbara Pym, The Sweet Dove Died

In a world where the kings are employers
Where the amateur prevails and delicacy fails to pay
In a world where the princes are lawyers
What can anyone expect except to recollect
...liasons?
Steven Sondheim, "Liasons," A Little Night Music

The minute we need a thing, we begin paying for it whether we buy it or not.
Laura Ingalls Wilder

are you rockin the spot?
yes I be
showin others they do not?
yes I be
havin them towed from the lot?
yes I be
that's my job as a supa emcee
De La Soul, "Wonce Again Long Island," Stakes Is High

My advice to you as a young actor at the beginning of an illustrious career is that not everybody can be your friend so you choose your enemies. And when you see them you walk up to them and say, 'You are my enemy.' And do you know how you will know your enemy? Anyone who gets in the way of your work.
Bette Davis

Strength doesn't lie in numbers
Strength doesn't lie in wealth
Strength lies in nights of peaceful slumbers
When you wake up--wake up!
The Sound of Music

Those are my principles. If you don't like them I have others.
Groucho Marx

Twenty minutes' sleep. Just a nice doze. In that time I had muffed a job and lost eight thousand dollars. Well, why not? In twenty minutes you can sink a battleship, down three or four planes, hold a double execution. You can die, get married, get fired and find a new job, have a tooth pulled, have your tonsils out. In twenty minutes you can even get up in the morning. You can get a glass of water at a night club--maybe.
Raymond Chandler, Farewell My Lovely

Nessun maggior dolore
Che ricordarsi del tempo felice
Nella miseria.
Dante, Divine Comedy

Darling, it's late, and I'm very, very tired of youth and love and self-sacrifice.
Old Acquaintance

My cooking: Was I a great experimenter, a pioneer? Whose rich command of unorthodox mixtures will be the stuff of legend in the new millennium? Or was my food just ghastly?
"The Vicar of Dibley"

There's someone else I've got to be
George Michael, "Freedom '90"

But there was nothing to do about it that seemed worth the changes I would have to make, even for a few minutes, in the way I was.
M.F.K. Fisher, The Gastronomical Me

Even Dickon did not go near the close-grown corner in those days, but waited until by the quiet working of some mysterious spell he seemed to have conveyed to the soul of the little pair that in the garden there was nothing which was not quite like themselves--nothing which did not understand the wonderfulness of what was happening to them--the immense, tender, terrible, heart-breaking beauty and solemnity of Eggs.
Frances Hodgson Burnett, The Secret Garden

Another chance to disapprove,
Another brilliant zinger,
Another reason not to move,
Another vodka stinger.
Steven Sondheim, "Ladies Who Lunch," Company

I think the American people are disposed often to be generous rather than just.
Frederick Douglass, Annual Meeting of the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in Boston, April, 1865

Herz, mein Herz, sei nicht beklommen,
und ertrage dein Geschick,
neuer Frühling gibt zurück,
was der Winter dir genommen.

Und wie viel ist dir geblieben,
und wie schön ist noch die Welt!
Und, mein Herz, was dir gefällt,
alles, alles darfst du lieben!
Heinrich Heine, Buch der Lieder

The time to make up your mind about people is never.
The Philadelphia Story

If you're looking for your big breakout single--ooh, you might want to put a bid on this one tonight, ladies and gentlemen, because we are talking to Phil Collins' people, right. But then again...aren't we all?
Hedwig and the Angry Inch

Think you, 'mid all this mighty sum
Of things forever speaking,
That nothing of itself will come,
But we must still be seeking?
William Wordsworth, "Expostulation and Reply"

People thought he was modest. He wasn't. He believed deeply in his own superiority, but only deeply. On the surface, in his immediate responses, in his daily life, Johnny worried and judged and brought himself to task.
Cathleen Schine, The Love Letter

Flaws terrify parents.
Sara Paretsky, Tunnel Vision

I flew down to Washington and collected my things and had a big fight with Mark in which he accused me of the thing men think is the most insulting thing they can accuse you of--wanting to be married--and he took me to the airport and my duffel bag burst in the middle of the National Airport parking lot and all the whisks and frying pans and cookbooks fell out on the ground and then we had another big fight over whether it was his Julia Child or mine that I was taking back to New York (it was his) and that was that.
Nora Ephron, Heartburn

"Can you sleep on your stomach with such big buttons on your pajamas?"
Groucho to "Pagliacci," A Night at the Opera

We buttered everything from broccoli to brownies, and would have buttered butter itself if it were not for the problems of traction presented by the butter-butter interface.
Barbara Ehrenreich

I was going to suggest you get outside of the musty place where you can count the dust particles falling around you and get out into the world and see what everybody else is doing.
Gene Simmons to Terry Gross

Full many a gem of purest ray serene,
The dark unfathom'd caves of ocean bear
Thomas Gray, "Elegy on a Country Churchyard"

The kids keep telling me I should try this new "Method Acting," but I'm too old, I'm too tired and I'm too talented to care.
Spencer Tracy

Little happens: life seems to have pushed a steamroller up against the door and nailed the windows and stuffed something down the chimney. It is now dancing up and down outside the glass shouting 'Live dangerously!' I turn round and show it my bum.
Philip Larkin, Letters

Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire.
Hud

This moment was safe, though, this could not be touched. Here we sat together . . . This was secure, this funny fragment of time he would never remember, never think about again. He would not hold it sacred . . . For them it was just after lunch, quarter-past-three on a haphazard afternoon, like any hour, like any day. They did not want to hold it close, imprisoned and secure, as I did. They were not afraid.
Daphne duMaurier, Rebecca

"No, Countess. The world has changed. The garbage has changed."
Jean Giraudoux, The Madwoman of Chaillot

She sang . . . and sometimes [she whispered to him] beneath the rustle of leaves turned over. "Georgie, I'm cleverer than anybody ever was, and I shall die in the night," she said once.
E.F. Benson, Queen Lucia

Harriet had long ago discovered that one could not like people any the better, merely because they were ill, or dead--still less because one had once liked them very much. Some happy souls could go through life without making this discovery, and they were the men and women who were called "sincere."
Dorothy L. Sayers, Gaudy Night

"And so you shall, you old-fashioned boy."
Tallulah Bankhead to Chico Marx's "God, I'd like to fuck you"

Whatever you can do or dream, you can begin. Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.
J.W. Goethe, more or less

I've just made my curtsy to King George and Queen Mary. Now I happen to love curtsying. I was brought up British, don't forget. And also I like to extend my extremities.
Diana Vreeland, DV

Drink and dance and laugh and lie,
Love, the reeling midnight through,
For tomorrow we shall die!
(But, alas, we never do.)
Dorothy Parker, "The Flaw in Paganism"

Now, when I see a woman, I'm no longer so quick to classify her as one of the elect or one of the damned . . . In their most mundane tasks, I grant them that mystery I used to deny them.
Eric Rohmer, L'Amour l'apres-midi

And now we see that there are some people who always have a Save Something sticker on their car. Save Me--a man might say, who wakes up in the watches of the night and thinks of death.
Barbara Pym, A Very Private Eye

She thought: I must learn to be my own person, however late, however much it hurts. I have to do it.
P.D. James, A Taste for Death

That's just the tip of the iceberg
Look, it's too long for a song
But perfect for a book
LL Cool J, "Father"

If you're listening, God
Please don't make it hard to know
If we should believe in the things that we see
"Home," The Wiz

I want to be filthy low--vile--call it anything you please--but God I want to live my own life.
Mae West

Never be daunted in private.
M.F.K. Fisher (via Hemingway), An Alphabet for Gourmets

I thort your kindness was love but it ain't cause I seen him.
Charlie Chaplin, The Tramp

Susan identified herself in her voice. She was as close as she ever got to being whoever she was when she was talking.
Carrie Fisher, Postcards From the Edge

Wondering if this could ever make her suffer, she thought of Windsor Terrace. I am not there. She began to go round, in little circles, things that at least her senses had loved--her bed, with the lamp turned on on winter mornings, the rug in Thomas's study... Only in a house where one has learnt to be lonely does one have this solicitude for things. One's relation to them, the daily seeing or touching, begins to become love, and to lay one open to pain.
Elizabeth Bowen, The Death of the Heart

I write when I feel strongly, and want to tell people . . . I have no enthusiasm for obscurity. Except, of course, for luminous and wonder-generating obscurity.
Philip Larkin

The world is still beautiful, she told herself, and I am still in it. Everything else can be put right, in time.
Barbara Neely, Blanche on the Lam

I do not not know what I desire
When summer nights are dark and still,
When the wind's many-voiced quire
Sleeps among the muffled branches.
I long and know not what i will:
And not a sound of life or laughter stanches
Time's black and silent flow.
I do not know what I desire,
I do not know.
Aldous Huxley, Crome Yellow

sometimes I drift when I drive
Geto Boys, "Mind's Playin Tricks"

"All her life each day I know," answered Ram Dass. "Her going out I know, and her coming in; her sadness and her poor joys; her coldness and her hunger."
Frances Hodgson Burnett, A Little Princess

We're a big rough rich wild people and crime is the price we pay for it, and organized crime is the price we pay for organization.
Raymond Chandler, The Long Goodbye

And all this mourning has veiled the truth. It's not so much lest we forget, as lest we remember. Because you should realize that so far as the Cenotaph and the Last Post and all that stuff is concerned, there's no better way of forgetting something than by commemorating it.
Alan Bennett, The History Boys

I haven't lived this long not to know tacky when I see it!
Armistead Maupin, Further Tales of the City

Poor Lizzie has ceased articulating.
Ronald Firbank, The Flower Beneath the Foot

Last line: "Just why the mantis shrimp needs such a rarefied level of vision is unclear, although researchers suspect it is to do with food and sex."