This is the only "wet" community in a wide area, and is the rendezvous of cow hands seeking to break the monotony of chuck wagon f...ood and range life. Friday night is the "big time" for local cowboys, and consequently the calaboose is called the "Friday night jail."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
It's just a game--baseball--an amusement, a marginal thing, not an art, not a consequential metaphor for life, not a public trust.... It may have broken Bart Giamatti's sentimental heart, but it will never break mine.... In its behind-the-scenes machinations as sport, baseball has developed unexpected ties to big-time professional wrestling, with that strange spectacle's buffoonish, self-important, overstuffed Steinbrennerish management types spouting gibberish about the best interests of this and such and the need for moral direction, all in counterpoise to sullenly big-muscled, bad-boy superstars nattering and snuffling about not getting any respect and not being in it for the dough, and being in it for the dough.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Why don't you take a good look at yourself! What do you see?! A doctor, a scientist, a businessman? You see a scar-faced ex- con, ...a two-bit safecracker, a petty thief who don't know when he made the big time. Where do you come off to blast her! No matter what she's been, what she's done. She's a giant! And you wanna know why? Well, I'll tell ya. Because she sees something in you worth saving. If only one tenth of one percent of all the good in her could rub off on you, you'd be a giant too! But you're a midget! In your head, in your heart, in your whole makeup! You're a midget!LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Still, I am prepared for this voyage, and for anything else you may care to mention. Not that I am not afraid, but there is v...ery little time left. You have probably made travel arrangements, and know the feeling. Suddenly, one morning, the little train arrives in the station, but oh, so big It is! Much bigger and faster than anyone told you.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In movies about women, all important historical and natural events are translated into the terms of a woman's daily life. World Wa...r I is not about the Allies versus the Kaiser. It's about how unmarried women become pregnant when they have sex. The Depression is not about an economic collapse. It's about runs in stockings, no money for carfare, and being forced out into the streets. Natural disasters like earthquakes and cholera epidemics are defined by miscarriages and dying children. Everything is couched in terms of what are presumed to be the major events of a woman's life: men, marriage, motherhood, and all the usual "feminine" things. At the same time that big events are made small, personal, small events are made huge.... Thus, the woman's film is a genre that generously empowers a sex that society has relegated to secondary status.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
In baseball there are generalists, who keep their eye on the ball and see the big picture; football is full of special-duty charac...ters who are very limited in terms of their range but have depth. Baseball represents America before the frontier ended, when there was plenty of space and plenty of time, and philosophic anarchists roamed around on verdant fields "doing their thing" with a free and reckless abandon. The game is relaxing and not particularly taxing on the players, who play many times each week. Football is tremendously difficult on the players and is so tiring that sixty minutes of clock time--which amounts to several hours of real time--exhausts them. Baseball developed when we thought nature was a limitless reservoir and we would always live in abundance. Football reflects a different world view; everything has to be fought for, resources are precious, hostile people (guards, monster men) are everywhere and in such a world you have to grab what you can.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Johnny Rocco: Yeah, yeah, that's me. Sure, I was all of those things. And more! When Rocco talked everybody shut up and listened! ...What Rocco said went! Nobody was as big as Rocco! It'll be like that again only more so. I'll be back up there one of these days, and then you're really gonna see something! James Temple (with contempt): If the time ever comes when your kind can walk a city street in daylight with nothing to fear from the people.... Frank McCloud: The time has come, Mr. Temple. It's here.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
America was too big to have been discovered all at one time. It would have been better for the graces if it had been discovered in... pieces of about the size of France or Germany at a time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Cats of all kinds weave in and out of the text; Burroughs has clearly taken to them in a big way in his old age and seems torn bet...ween a fear they will betray him into sentimentality and a resigned acceptance that a man can't be ironic all the time.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Turn 'em loose.... Wherever they go, they'll be on my land. My land. We're here and we're gonna stay here. Gimme ten years and I'l...l have that brand on the gates of the greatest ranch in Texas. The big house'll be down by the river, the corrals and the barns behind it. It'll be a good place to live in. Ten years and I'll have the Red River "D" on more cattle than you've looked at anywhere. I'll have that brand on enough beef to feed the whole country. Good beef for hungry people. Beef to make 'em strong, to make 'em grow. But it takes work, it takes sweat, and it takes time, lots of time. It takes years.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »