“I should think that an ordinary copy of the King James version would have been good enough for those Congressmen.”
Thoughtful feeling
Thoughtful Quotes — page 193 of 303
“School is about two parts ABCs to fifty parts Where Do I Stand in the Great Pecking Order of Humankind.”
“The most assiduous task of parenting is to divine the difference between boundaries and bondage.”
“It's one thing to carry your life wherever you go. Another thing to always go looking for it somewhere else.”
“People ask without wanting to know.”
“I never think that anything I'm writing is bluntly political in any way. I'm not going for commentary.”
“Parenting is something that happens mostly while you're thinking of something else.”
“It is true that I do not speak as well as I can think. But that is true of most people, as nearly as I can tell.”
“He warned Mother not to flout God's Will by expecting too much of us. "Sending a girl to college is like pouring water in your shoes,' he still loves to say, as often as possible. 'It's hard to say which is worse, seeing it run out and waste the water, or seeing it hold in and wreck the shoes.”
“Shoes would interfere with her conversation, for she constantly addresses the ground under her feet. Asking forgiveness. Owning, disowning, recanting, recharting a hateful course of events to make sense of her complicity. We all are, I suppose. Trying to invent our version of the story. All human odes are essentially one, "My life; what I stole from history, and how I live with it.”
“The man with but one idea in his head is sure to exaggerate that to top-heaviness, and thus he loses his equilibrium.”
“If someone saw a movie of your life so far, when the credits rolled, would they say, “Wow, that was awesome?” Or would they scratch their heads and say, “I wonder what that was all about?”
“At heart, Sussman was a theoretician. In another age, he might have been a Talmudic scholar. He had cultivated a Socratic method, zinging question after question at the reporters: Who moved over from Commerce to CRP with Stans? What about Mitchell's secretary? Why won't anybody say when Liddy went to the White House or who worked with him there? Mitchell and Stans both ran the budget committee, right? What does that tell you? Then Sussman would puff on his pipe, a satisfied grin on his face.”
“It seems to me that politicians ought to use the same words as other people.”
“I thought I was writing for a fairly hip, intelligent crowd; I just thought there were more of them out there. But they're not. They're not out there waiting. They're not gonna use their intelligence on your book.”
“I always intended to be light and open. I misjudged the American audience.”
“What is meat for one is not for another--no accounting for fancy.”
“It is the man who does not want to express an opinion whose opinion I want.”
“As a general rule never take your whole fee in advance, nor any more than a small retainer. When fully paid beforehand, you are more than a common mortal if you can feel the same interest in the case, as if something was still in prospect for you, as well as for your client.”
“Let us do nothing through passion and ill temper.”