Marriage accustomed one to the good things, so one came to take them for granted, but magnified the bad things, so they came to fe...el as painful as a grain in one's eye. An open window, a forgotten quart of milk, a TV set left blaring, socks on the bathroom floor could become occasions for incredible rage. And something happened sexually in marriage--the swearing to forsake all others, despite its slight observance, had a profound effect. Some people felt trapped by it, impelled to assert what they called freedom. Some accepted it like a rein, and in the effort to avoid pain in the form of hopeless desire, cut off occasions of desire, avoided having long talks at parties with attractive members of the opposite sex. In time, all feeling for the opposite sex was cut off, and intercourse limited to the barest politenesses.... But something happened to you when you did that, a kind of death seeped up from the genitals to the rest of the body, till it showed in the eyes, the gestures, in a certain lifelessness.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
But it is rather derogatory that your dwelling-place should be only a neighborhood to a great city,--to live on an inclined plane.... I do not like their cities and forts, with their morning and evening guns, and sails flapping in one's eye. I want a whole continent to breathe in, and a good deal of solitude and silence, such as all Wall Street cannot buy,--nor Broadway with its wooden pavement. I must live along the beach, on the southern shore, which looks directly out to sea,--and see what that great parade of water means, that dashes and roars, and has not yet wet me, as long as I have lived.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
He sustained him in a desert land, in a howling wilderness waste; he shielded him, cared for him, guarded him as the apple of his ...eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To stroll is a science, it is the gastronomy of the eye. To walk is to vegetate, to stroll is to live.... To stroll is to enjoy, i...t is to assume a mind-set, it is to admire the sublime pictures of unhappiness, of love, of joy, of graceful or grotesque portraits; it is to plunge one's vision to the depths of a thousand existences: young, it is to desire everything; old, it is to live the life of the young, to marry their passions.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
To "give style" to one's character--a rare and noble art! Those practice it who compass all that their natures present as strength...s and weaknesses and then fit them into an artistic plan until every one appears as art and reason and even weakness enchants the eye.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
People on the East Coast regard people west of, say, Philadelphia as either slightly cute or slightly repugnant, alien life forms.... Any show that comes from out of town to New York invariably gets a review which says in effect, "They might like this stuff in Hicksville, but this is the Apple, Kids. This is the eye of God." Californians don't have that kind of arrogance, luckily, because they can't pay attention long enough to finish anything. That's why so many Californians are consultants or producers, and so many people in the East are writers or directors. Never mind that most writers on the best-seller lists couldn't put a well-formed sentence together if you gave them the glue, or that the so-called "serious" writers only write about writers writing stories about writers writing stories, the two coasts are still the cultural power centers of America: books, theater, and art in the East; movies, music, and TV in the West.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated witho...ut end. It is the highest emblem in the cipher of the world.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »