Oh, the holiness of always being the injured party. The historically oppressed can find not only sanctity but safety in the state ...of victimization. When access to a better life has been denied often enough, and successfully enough, one can use the rejection as an excuse to cease all efforts. After all, one reckons, "they" don't want me, "they" accept their own mediocrity and refuse my best, "they" don't deserve me.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In 1872 I received a request like this and I did register and vote, for which I was arrested, convicted and fined $100. Excuse me ...if I decline to repeat the experience.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The truth is despite the hard work and juggling required to keep the different facets of the frantic life afloat, the "superwoman"... has one marvelous compensation. Being busy and being seen to be busy lets you off the hook. Buys you a way out of all aspects of your many roles you secretly despise ... like cleaning cupboards ... or entertaining your husband's business friends. When you combine wife, mother, career and all, each role become the perfect excuse for avoiding the worst aspects of the other.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
"... Farewell then, Until, under a better sky... We may meet expended, for just doing it Is only an excuse. We need the tether Of entering each other's lives, eyes wide apart, crying."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
This surface good-nature which captivates a new acquaintance and is no bar to treachery, which knows no scruple and is never at fa...ult for an excuse, which makes an outcry at the wound which it condones, is one of the most distinctive features of the journalist. This camaraderie (the word is a stroke of genius) corrodes the noblest minds; it eats into their pride like rust, kills the germ of great deeds, and lends a sanction to moral cowardice.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rape is a culturally fostered means of suppressing women. Legally we say we deplore it, but mythically we romanticize and perpetua...te it, and privately we excuse and overlook it.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
If the pages of this book contain some successful verse, the reader must excuse me the discourtesy of having usurped it first. Our... nothingness differs little; it is a trivial and chance circumstance that you should be the reader of these exercises and I their author.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »