“Its unthinkable, now to live as her parents had done, going to work from nine to five and enjoying the benefits of the newly-formed health and education services. What paradise it had seemed! Now, ...”

“Its not by accident that people talk of a state of confusion as not being able to see the wood for the trees, or of being out of the woods when some crisis is surmopunted. It is a place of loss, co...”

“They might watch American movies, wear American clothes, even read American books but Bush and the Iraq War have made actual American people social lepers; she only has to open her mouth in some pl...”

“Few pretty and privileged young women really understand the essential injustice of biology...For most of her life as a woman, the rules were perfectly clear cut: other women were the enemy, and all...”

“Family is all politics. Everyone hates each others guts, if theyre honest Most brothers and sisters try to top each other, given the chance; you always get the worst wars in countries with big fami...”

“Familiarity breeds sentiment before contempt.”

“He had spent much of his childhood perched on the coast, with the taste of salt in the air: this was a place of woodland and river, mysterious and secretive in a different way from St. Mawes, the l...”

“A dull, decent people, cherishing and fortifying their dullness behind a quarter of a million bayonets.”

“[The official prosecutors] ... were more vengeful on behalf of our injuries than I myself could ever be.”

“Income from labor [in the United States] is about as unequally distributed as has ever been observed anywhere.”

“Irrespective of where you are, where you were born, what you can do or cannot do, irrespective of your starting capital in life, you can raise your value so high that you are needed for the most im...”

“Every man has a starting capital in life and it is called worth or self-worth.”

“But youre out of another world old kid You ought to live on top of the Woolworth Building in an apartment made of cutglass and cherry blossoms.”

“[Poem: Slates of Grey]Sullen faces like slates of greyWhat Id seen on a walk today.Bodies rushing bodies boltingTime for life a disregarding.Money to make and to grow oldWhat about the hands to hol...”

“I would describe the distinction between city and landscape like this: cities tend to excite and agitate me; they make me feel big or small, self-confident, proud, curious, excited, tense, annoyed....”